■BANKING
JPMorgan to buy Cazenove
US investment bank JPMorgan Chase was to unveil a £1 billion (US$1.67 billion) deal to buy 190-year-old London stockbroker Cazenove yesterday, the Financial Times (FT) said. The bank is to pay about £5.35 a share for the 50 percent stake of Cazenove, FT said. Under the deal, Cazenove chairman David Mayhew would stay on and was likely to receive a windfall of more than £19 million, the newspaper said, citing sources.
■BANKING
Deutsche buys more Huaxia
Deutsche Bank is set to become the largest shareholder in China’s Huaxia Bank (華夏銀行) after agreeing to increase its stake in the mid-sized lender to 17.12 percent, the Chinese bank said yesterday. Deutsche Bank will buy 171.2 million shares, or a 3.43 percent stake, from German private investment firm Sal Oppenheim Jr and Cie for 81.6 million euros (US$121.8 million), Huaxia said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Deutsche Bank currently owns 13.69 percent of Huaxia Bank.
■SEMICONDUCTORS
Infineon returns to profit
German chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG said yesterday its fourth-quarter net income rose sharply from huge losses a year ago as cost reductions boosted earnings. Infineon, based in Neubiberg, said net profit totaled 14 million euros in the quarter ending September, compared with a loss of 884 million euros in the same period last year. Revenue declined 18 percent to 855 million euros from 1.05 billion euros in the fourth quarter a year ago. Compared with the third quarter, however, revenue increased 12 percent. For the full fiscal year, Infineon still reported a net loss of 671 million euros compared with a net loss of nearly 4 billion euros in fiscal 2008.
■MINING
Baotou’s Centrex bid passes
Australia has approved a bid by China’s Baotou Iron and Steel (包鋼) to take a A$40 million (US$37 million) stake in a magnetite project run by Centrex, the mining firm said yesterday. Under the deal, given the nod without condition by the Australian Foreign Investments Review Board, Baotou will take up to 50 percent of Centrex’s deposit of magnetite, or iron oxide, in Bungalow, South Australia.
■METALS
Gold demand jumps 10%
Gold demand climbed 10 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months after investors bought the metal as a currency hedge and jewelry purchases picked up, the World Gold Council said. Global consumption increased to 800.3 tonnes as Chinese demand surged to 120.2 tonnes, the London-based industry group said in a report yesterday. Total demand was 34 percent lower compared with a year earlier, when investors sought refuge from the economic crisis amid lower gold prices.
■AVIATION
Air France-KLM posts loss
Air France-KLM, Europe’s biggest airline, on Wednesday reported a loss of 147 million euros in the second quarter of its fiscal year as the economic crisis hit air travel. Chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said the airline had reduced costs and capacity, but added: “Lack of visibility over the timing and strength of the economic recovery means we must pursue our efforts in terms of cost reduction.” The Franco-Dutch airline also announced cumulative losses over six months at 573 million euros.
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