■BANKING
Tokyo probing BNP Paribas
French bank BNP Paribas is suspected of manipulating stock prices on the Tokyo market and may face “severe” punishment by Japan’s financial watchdog, a report said yesterday. The Tokyo branch of BNP Paribas Securities (Japan) Ltd allegedly manipulated the stock price of Internet and telecommunications giant Softbank Corp and disrupted trading on the Tokyo bourse, the Asahi Shimbun said. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission is probing the French company and plans to ask the Financial Services Agency to take administrative action, the daily said, without naming its sources. The agency was likely to consider “severe punishment, including a possible suspension of business operations,” it said.
■ENERGY
Siemens buys Solel Solar
German conglomerate Siemens announced the acquisition yesterday of Solel Solar Systems, a maker of panels used in power plants harnessing the sun’s rays to generate electricity. Siemens said it was buying Israel-based Solel for US$418 million from current majority owners, British-based investment firm Ecofin and another unnamed shareholder. Solel is one of the world’s top two suppliers of solar receivers and also plans and constructs vast “solar fields,” posting sales of close to US$90 million in the first half of this year, Siemens said in a statement. “After the rapid and highly successful expansion of our wind power business, we now want to continue this success story in the solar sector.”
■AUTOMOBILES
No word on Hummer bid
China’s Commerce Ministry has not yet received an application from heavy machinery maker Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co (四川騰中重工機械) for the acquisition of the Hummer brand from General Motors, an official said yesterday. “The Commerce Ministry has not received any formal application from Tengzhong,” a spokesman told a news conference. “We know no details about Tengzhong’s overseas purchase agreement.” The Chinese company last week signed a “definitive agreement” with GM to buy the sport-utility brand.
■INTERNET
Twitter inks India deal
Twitter announced a deal with India’s top mobile company Bharti Airtel on Wednesday that will allow users of the hot micro-blogging service to send “tweets” at standard SMS message rates and receive them for free. “In many parts of the world people do not have Internet access but they can text — and that means they can access Twitter,” Biz Stone, a cofounder of the San Francisco-based company said in a blog post. “Our partnership with Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile operator in India, means a huge population of people can now send tweets at standard rates and receive tweets for free.”
■FINANCE
Lazard’s CEO dies
Bruce Wasserstein, the CEO of Lazard Ltd and a prominent Wall Street dealmaker, died on Wednesday after being hospitalized earlier this week with an irregular heartbeat, a company spokeswoman said. He was 61. In a statement on Wednesday, Lazard’s board said the cause of death had not yet been determined. Wasserstein had been a Wall Street superstar since the 1980s, working on such landmark deals as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’ takeover of RJR Nabisco, and the Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter and AOL-Time Warner mergers.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)
EYE ON STRAIT: The US spending bill ‘doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan,’ while also seeking to counter the influence of China US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a US$1.2 trillion spending package that includes US$300 million in foreign military financing to Taiwan, as well as funding for Taipei-Washington cooperative projects. The US Congress early on Saturday overwhelmingly passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to avoid a partial shutdown and fund the government through September for a fiscal year that began six months ago. Under the package, the Defense Appropriations Act would provide a US$27 billion increase from the previous fiscal year to fund “critical national defense efforts, including countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” according to a summary