ALUMINUM
US probes China’s ‘dumping’
The US International Trade Commission on Friday said in an initial finding that imports of aluminum alloy sheet metal from China harm US producers, allowing a US probe into whether the product was being dumped or subsidized to move forward. The US Department of Commerce estimated it would impose anti-dumping duties of about 56.54 to 59.72 percent in the case. About US$603.6 million worth of the flat-rolled metal was imported from China in 2016.
AUTOMAKERS
GM eyes fully driverless car
General Motors Co (GM) is seeking approval from US regulators for an autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals, GM announced on Friday. It asked the US Department of Transportation to allow it to deploy the Cruise AV that will travel the roads without human intervention. GM spokeswoman Stephanie Rice said the company plans to put its driverless cars on the roads next year.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Teva downgraded to ‘Ba2’
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd’s credit rating was cut into junk territory by Moody’s Investors Service, adding to the company’s woes as revenue from its bestselling drug drops and it sells assets to pay down debt. Moody’s said it lowered Teva’s corporate-credit rating two notches to “Ba2,” the second-highest junk rating. The company has a debt load of about US$32 billion, compared with its current equity market value of about US$21 billion.
REAL ESTATE
Blixseth settles with creditors
Former billionaire real-estate developer Tim Blixseth has reached a US$3 million settlement to resolve claims he illegally pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars from a Montana resort for the superrich. The agreement between Blixseth and creditors for the Yellowstone Club was revealed in court documents filed late on Friday. Blixseth founded the posh resort near Big Sky that has attracted celebrity members. It went bankrupt in 2008 and has since come under new ownership.
CREDIT CARDS
Chip card to cut retail costs
Visa Inc is to stop requiring signatures for purchases made in North America using chip-card technology, a significant win for big brick-and-mortar retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc that could help them cut the cost of accepting plastic. The move takes effect in April for more than 2.5 million merchant locations with terminals equipped to read so-called EMV-chip cards, San Francisco-based Visa said in a statement on Friday.
MANUFACTURING
Foxconn faces US land hurdle
A dozen homeowners living near the Wisconsin site for a massive Foxconn Technology Group (富士康) complex are going to court to try to stop efforts to forcibly take their land. The property owners say the community where the plant is to be located, the Village of Mount Pleasant, is violating their constitutional rights. The homeowners’ attorney, Erik Olsen, said the village claims that it is taking the land for public projects, such as roads and utilities, but he says it is the Taiwan-based Foxconn that ultimately benefits. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to block the Foxconn project permanently.
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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