■ STEEL
Makers back in the black
German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp AG said it earned 298 million euros (US$383 million) in the April to June quarter as orders and revenues rose strongly in a recovering economy. The profit reported yesterday compared with a net loss of 630 million euros a year earlier in the company’s fiscal third quarter. ThyssenKrupp said orders rose 38 percent to 10.93 billion euros from 7.93 billion euros. Revenues were up 26 percent to 11.68 billion euros from 9.3 billion euros. Meanwhile, the world’s seventh-largest steelmaker, Tata Steel, said on Thursday it had swung to a consolidated first-quarter net profit from a loss a year earlier as demand from car and construction firms improved. The company posted a consolidated net profit for the three months to June of 18.25 billion rupees (US$388 million), against a loss of 22.08 billion rupees a year earlier.
■ EMPLOYMENT
Staffing firm takes over
Randstad Holding NV said it had agreed to buy the 79.5 percent of Japan’s FujiStaff it does not already own for ¥13.7 billion (US$159 million). Amsterdam-based Randstad, the world’s third-largest temporary staffing company, said its offer of ¥27,500 per FujiStaff share represented a 62 percent premium to the closing share price of ¥17,010 on Thursday. The deal is supported by FujiStaff’s founders, who hold a 44.6 percent stake. FujiStaff had sales of ¥60 billion last year.
■ AVIATION
Korean Air posts losses
Korean Air Lines, South Korea’s flagship carrier, fell into red in the second quarter because of foreign exchange losses sparked by a stronger local currency, it said yesterday. It posted a net loss of 233.1 billion won (US$196 million) in the three months ended June 30, a reverse from a net profit of 78.5 billion won a year earlier. However, the airline reported an all-time high operating profit of 352.1 billion won in the second quarter, a turnaround from an operating loss of 127.3 billion won a year earlier. Sales jumped 37 percent to a record 2.836 trillion won, up from 2.075 trillion a year earlier.
■ Insurance
China Life drops AIA bid
China Life and two other Chinese investors have withdrawn from bidding for stakes in American International Group’s Asian (AIA) unit ahead of its planned initial public offering, state media said yesterday. China Life, the nation’s largest life insurer, had planned to jointly bid for AIA shares with private conglomerate Fosun Group and state-run China Cinda Asset Management, the 21st Century Business Herald reported, citing unnamed investment bankers. However, the three companies have decided to temporarily pull out of the process on concerns it could be priced too high, the report said.
■ GAMING
July sales edge down: NPD
US videogame industry sales slipped last month despite a jump in the number of shoppers snatching up Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles, figures released on Thursday by NPD Group showed. The US$846.5 million spent on videogame hardware and software was about 1 percent less than the revenue posted in the same month last year and came despite console sales climbing 12 percent to US$313.8 million. Sales of videogame software tallied US$403.3 million in an 8 percent drop from the US$438 million spent on titles in July last year.
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