■INSURANCE
Swiss Re’s Aigrain resigns
Jacques Aigrain has stepped down as chief executive officer of Swiss Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, and will be replaced by Stefan Lippe, the group announced yesterday in a statement. Lippe, 53, who has been with the group for 25 years, moves up from his position as deputy CEO position and chief operating officer, the company said. The group last week announced it expected net losses for last year of 1 billion Swiss francs (US$860 million).
■AVIATION
Call centers returning to US
United Airlines confirmed on Wednesday that it was closing its call center in India and transferring 165 jobs to the US, which is reeling from layoffs amid recession. The move came about a month after UAL Corp, parent of the third biggest North American carrier, said it was cutting 1,000 more jobs, pushing the total to 9,000 by year’s end, to help stem losses. The jobs in India will be transferred to call centers in Chicago and Honolulu, Hawaii, and filled by workers who now handle reservations, the Chicago-based airline said.
■MOTORCYCLES
Yamaha may announce loss
Sluggish motorcycle sales and the strong yen are expected to push Japan’s Yamaha Motor Co into a loss for the first time in 26 years this year, the company said yesterday. Yamaha, which also makes boat engines and all-terrain vehicles, said it would cut hundreds more jobs to cope with the economic downturn. The group forecast a net loss of ¥42 billion (US$467 billion) for next year. Revenue is expected to decline 22.1 percent to ¥1.25 trillion. Net profit fell 97.4 percent last year to ¥1.85 billion, the company said.
■AUTOMAKERS
Renault profits down
French carmaker Renault yesterday announced a 78 percent drop in net profits for last year to 599 million euros (US$774 million) as demand for new cars dried up. Full-year revenue fell 7 percent last year to 37.79 billion euros after plunging 29 percent in the last quarter alone as sales dried up. The group said its priority for this year was to produce positive cash flow by reducing costly inventories, pulling back on investment and continuing to force down fixed costs. It gave no financial forecasts for the year.
■PHARMACEUTICALS
Bayer to open Beijing center
German pharmaceutical company Bayer AG said yesterday it would invest 100 million euros (US$129 million) in a new global research and development center in Beijing over the next five years. China is the third largest market worldwide for the Bayer group, and it will become the third country besides Germany and the US to host such a center for its Bayer Schering Pharma unit. “We are continuously increasing our presence in the Asia Pacific Region where China is our key growth driver,” Andreas Fibig, chairman of Bayer Schering Pharma’s board of management, said in a statement.
■AUSTRALIA
Senate rejects package
The Australian Senate yesterday rejected the government’s proposed A$42 billion (US$28 billion) stimulus package designed to boost the economy in the face of the global financial crisis. But Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the legislation would be reintroduced to parliament later in the day in “the national economic interest” and the government would not be deterred from taking “whatever action is necessary.”
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has