■TRADE
Seoul passes India pact
South Korea yesterday ratified a free trade deal with India that promises to slash tariffs on goods and services between two of Asia’s biggest economies. The agreement was passed in a vote by the National Assembly, two officials in the body’s secretariat said. An official vote tally was to be released later in the day, they said. The two countries signed the deal, known officially as a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, in August in Seoul.
■HOTELS
Hyatt IPO raises US$950m
Hyatt Hotels shares surged on Thursday, raising almost US$1 billion in an initial public offering (IPO) despite the tourism industry crisis, in Wall Street’s second largest flotation this year. The leading US hotel chain offered38 million shares at US$25 each for a total of US$950 million. The Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels, which is 85 percent owned by the wealthy Pritzker family, became the 18th company to launch an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange this year. Hyatt operates hotels in 45 countries.
■STEEL
POSCO building in Turkey
South Korean steelmaker POSCO said yesterday it had begun building a plant in Turkey to produce steel for automobiles. The plant, when completed by June, will have an annual capacity of 170,000 tonnes of steel for automakers that include Ford, Renault, Fiat, Hyundai Motor, Toyota and Honda, POSCO said in a statement. The company, the world’s fourth largest steelmaker by output, currently has 41 steel processing facilities in 12 countries.
■BANKING
Credit still tight: bank head
Bank of America Corp on Thursday said the credit environment would remain difficult into next year, as unemployment was likely to continue to rise. Brian Moynihan, head of the bank’s consumer and small business banking units, told investors that Bank of America was starting to see some stabilization in the credit card business, but challenges remained. In the third quarter, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America lost more than US$2.2 billion as loan losses kept rising, providing evidence that consumers are still struggling to pay their bills.
■FINANCE
Fannie Mae posts huge loss
US state-controlled mortgage lender Fannie Mae posted on Thursday another multibillion-dollar quarterly loss and said it needed an additional US$15 billion in taxpayer funds. Fannie Mae reported a net loss of US$18.9 billion in the third quarter, 35 percent smaller than a year ago but sharply higher than its US$14.8 billion loss in the second quarter. Combined losses to date stand at US$56.8 billion.
■TELECOMS
Droid hits markets
A Motorola Droid smartphone based on Google-backed software hit the US market yesterday, taking aim at mobile device powerhouses such as Apple, Nokia, and Research In Motion (RIM). Droid, which will work on the Verizon telecom network, joins growing ranks of smartphones based on an open-source operating system backed by Internet titan Google. Market tracking firm Gartner predicted that there would be at least 40 models of Android phones within a year, and that they would be the second place mobile platform by the end of 2012.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
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