STEEL
Countries to drop subsidies
The world’s largest steel-producing countries on Thursday agreed to dismantle market-distorting subsidies, but deep division remained, with China calling for more action from other producers. Speaking at the conclusion of a Berlin summit, German Minister of Economics and Energy Brigitte Zypries said delegates had agreed on the need to dismantle subsidies and arrange better sharing of information on the process of capacity reduction. Chinese Assistant Minister of Commerce Li Chenggang (李成鋼) said the world’s largest steel maker made painful efforts to cut capacity “while the rest of the world just watches.”
EUROPEAN UNION
Joblessness hits decade low
The buoyant economic recovery across the 19-country eurozone has pushed unemployment down to its lowest level in nearly nine years, but has yet to translate to a sustained pick-up in wages and prices, official figures said on Thursday. Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, said the jobless rate fell to 8.8 percent in October, from 8.9 percent the previous month. That is the lowest since January 2009. Across the region, there were 14.34 million people out of work, down 1.5 million in the past year.
CANADA
Account deficit nears record
Canada’s reliance on foreign financing rose to near record levels in the third quarter as exporters continue to struggle. The country’s current account deficit — what it needs to borrow from the rest of the world to finance spending — widened to C$19.3 billion (US$15.01 billion), the third-highest on record. Economists had forecast a C$20 billion deficit. Canada has booked current account deficits for 36 straight quarters, worth more than C$500 billion over that time.
BREWERIES
AB InBev muscles local beers
The EU on Thursday accused the world’s biggest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV (AB InBev), of illegally blocking cheaper imports of local favorites Leffe and Jupiler into Belgium. Both brands are Belgium’s best-selling beers and part of the AB InBev behemoth that the EU says has a “very strong” position on the Belgian beer market. AB InBev is based in the Belgian city of Leuven and completed a blockbuster merger worth US$103 billion with rival SABMiller PLC last year.
ENTERTAINMENT
Macau attracts high rollers
Macau’s casino revenue last month grew at the fastest pace in four months as tour operators attracted high-stakes players to the world’s largest gambling hub. Gross gaming receipts rose 23 percent to 23 billion patacas (US$2.9 billion) last month, data released yesterday by Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau showed. That exceeds the median estimate for a 19 percent increase in a Bloomberg survey of seven analysts. Revenue climbed 20 percent from January to last month.
AUTOMAKERS
Nissan’s car sales halved
Nissan Motor Co’s passenger car sales nearly halved in Japan last month, data released yesterday showed, following a 55 percent drop from the previous month as it struggles with a damaging inspection scandal. Sales of Nissan-brand passenger cars stood at 16,888, down 46.8 percent from a year earlier, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said. The dramatic fall in Nissan-brand cars compares with a more modest decline of just 5.5 percentage points in overall sales in the Japanese market last month.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure