AVIATION
Boeing to cut more jobs
Boeing plans to cut hundreds of additional jobs in its civil aviation business due to slowing sales, a spokesman said on Monday. “In an ongoing effort to increase overall competitiveness and invest in our future, we are reducing costs and matching employment levels to business and market requirements,” Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said. The downsizing is to come through a mix of “attrition, leaving open positions unfilled, a voluntary layoff program and in some cases, involuntary layoffs,” he added. The cuts are to take effect on June 23, and primarily affect production sites in Washington state, a person familiar with the situation said. Boeing is the biggest private employer in the state, with more than 70,000 workers. At the start of the year, Boeing eliminated 305 engineering jobs and cut 1,500 mechanics as part of a voluntary programs. Boeing plans additional job cuts later this year, a person close to the matter said. Boeing has 146,962 employees, down 7.6 percent from last year.
UNITED STATES
Treasury bill rates fall
Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills fell slightly in Monday’s auction. The Department of the Treasury auctioned US$39 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.820 percent, down from 0.825 percent last week. Another US$33 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 0.945 percent, down from 0.950 percent last week. The rates last week were the highest in more than eight years. The discount rates reflect that the bills sell for less than face value. For a US$10,000 bill, the three-month price was US$9,979.27, while a six-month bill sold for US$9,952.23. That would equal an annualized rate of 0.833 percent for the three-month bills and 0.963 percent for the six-month bills. Separately, the Federal Reserve on Monday said that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable-rate mortgages, fell to 1.03 percent on Thursday from 1.07 percent on Monday last week.
CONSTRUCTION
VolkerWessels seeks listing
Dutch construction company VolkerWessels yesterday said it would seek an initial public offering (IPO) of shares and a stock market listing on the Euronext exchange in Amsterdam. The company is owned by Reggeborgh Holding, which said it would sell a minority stake of a yet-to-be-determined size in the IPO. VolkerWessels had earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of 254 million euros (US$270.5 million) last year and sales of 5.5 billion euros, it said.
ENGINEERING
Kleinfeld steps down
Arconic Inc chief executive Klaus Kleinfeld, who oversaw the company’s split from former parent Alcoa, yesterday stepped down after the aluminum-parts maker’s board said he showed “poor judgment” in sending a letter to Elliott Management Corp amid a proxy fight. Kleinfeld’s resignation upends what had been shaping up as the biggest and most aggressive US proxy battle this year. Shares of the supplier for aircraft and automobiles surged the most in two months. Until Monday, Arconic’s board had stuck by Kleinfeld as Elliott, billionaire Paul Singer’s hedge fund, accused him of financial underperformance, an “obsession” with image and wasteful spending on a Manhattan, New York headquarters.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day