CANADA
Provinces to pay carbon tax
The government will impose a carbon price on provinces that do not adequately regulate emissions by themselves, Minister of the Environment Catherine McKenna said on Sunday without giving details on how the government will do so. McKenna said the new emissions regime would be in place sometime next month, before a federal-provincial meeting on the matter. She only said the government would have a “backstop” for provinces that do not comply, but did not address questions on penalties for defiance. The provinces, which enjoy significant jurisdiction over the environment, have been wary of Ottawa’s intentions and have said they should be allowed to cut carbon emissions their own way.
AUTOMAKERS
Rolls-Royce to cut top jobs
Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC is eliminating more than 200 positions from its management team as chief executive officer Warren East extends a wide-reaching restructuring of the embattled enginemaker. The additional cuts brings the total trimming of management positions under East’s reign to more than 600, a Rolls-Royce spokesman said in a statement on Sunday in response to a Financial Times report outlining the plans. About 270 of those positions had been phased out as of July 28, East said at the company’s half-year earnings report. Rolls-Royce has been struggling amid a downturn in demand for marine engines and servicing revenues from its business jet turbines. The company targets savings of between £30 million and £50 million (US$39 million and US$65 million) this year as part of a broader restructuring effort aimed at cutting spending by £200 million by the end of next year.
AUSTRALIA
Glitch suspends trading
Trading in Australian stocks was suspended for a second time yesterday after starting more than an hour late because of a technical glitch, with investors unable to buy and sell shares as they braced for US and Japan central bank meetings this week. ASX Ltd said it was working to fix the problem. The stock-exchange operator delayed the normal 10am equity market opening until 11:30am due to an issue relating to a component that allows it to manage individual stocks, Matthew Gibbs, a spokesman for the ASX in Sydney said earlier, adding that the company was working with its technology vendor NASDAQ Inc to prevent a recurrence. Australia’s equity market is worth US$1.1 trillion, the sixth-largest in the region.
BANKING
ECB urged to act on rates
The European Central Bank (ECB) must not allow low interest rates and monetary stimulus to last indefinitely, the head of Germany’s Bundesbank said yesterday. “Under no circumstances can interest rates remain so low for longer than is absolutely necessary with regard to price stability,” Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann told a group of European newspapers including the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. “The risks of ultra-loose monetary policy become larger the longer the phase of low interest rates lasts,” he said. The ECB’s headline main refinancing rate has stood at zero since early this year, while its deposit rate is in negative territory — meaning banks pay to park their money in its coffers. Combined with the central bank’s offers of cheap loans to banks and “quantitative easing” policy of buying state and corporate debt, low rates are supposed to drive down the cost of borrowing for businesses and households, which should stimulate growth in the economy.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”