■ Crude oil
Price falls on Iraq plan
Crude oil fell for the first time in three days after the UN Security Council voted to activate a program that uses revenue from the sale of Iraq's oil to purchase humanitarian supplies. The resolution gives UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan authority to negotiate contracts for the purchase of food and medical supplies. The resolution didn't say whether oil export sales would resume to add money to the relief fund. The program sold 1.73 million barrels of Iraqi oil a day last month, according to Bloomberg estimates. Crude oil for May delivery fell US$0.21, or 0.7 percent, to US$30.16 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
■ Bristol-Myers
SEC inquiry expanded
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, the drugmaker that restated US$2.5 billion of sales this month, said US regulators have expanded an inquiry into the company's accounting. Bristol-Myers restated after it loaded up wholesalers with more medicine than they could sell. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which in August started a formal probe into the strategy, expanded the inquiry in December to include accounting issues related to reserves and asset sales. US prosecutors widened their probe too, the company said in a regulatory filing. The company doesn't expect any further restatement, Bristol-Myers said in the filing. The SEC has been scrutinizing more companies' books since the collapse of energy trader Enron Corp.
■ Optical fiber
Corning agrees to settle
Corning Inc, the world's biggest maker of optical fiber for telecommunications networks, agreed to pay US$300 million to settle 12,400 asbestos lawsuits stemming from a pipe-making joint venture. The settlement will reduce first-quarter results by US$200 million, Corning said in a statement. The suits, which date to the 1970s, were filed by people who say they were sickened by asbestos products and sought as much as US$500 million in damages. The agreement clears Corning, which has had seven straight quarterly net losses, from all asbestos liability. Claimants sued its Pittsburgh Corning Corp joint venture with PPG Industries Inc, forcing the venture to seek bankruptcy protection in 2000. PPG, facing 100,000 claims, agreed in May to pay US$2.7 billion. The plaintiffs claimed the asbestos in ceilings and offices where they worked made them ill. Asbestos, used until the 1970s to make building materials and fire retardant, has been tied to a rare form of lung cancer and certain respiratory ailments.
■ Utilities
Duke boosts CEO's pay
Duke Energy Corp, the biggest US utility owner, increased Chief Executive Richard Priory's pay by 23 percent last year to US$5.94 million, even as profit fell 46 percent on an energy-trading slump and lower power prices. Priory was paid US$1.19 million in salary, US$1.68 million in restricted stock awards, US$2.22 million in stock tied to shareholder return targets met in 2000 and US$850,000 in other compensation, the company said in a regulatory filing. He was paid US$4.81 million in 2001. Priory also received 408,400 stock options, which have an exercise price of US$34.41 and expire in February 2012. The options were valued at US$3.92 million at the time they were given, the filing said.
NEW IDENTITY: Known for its software, India has expanded into hardware, with its semiconductor industry growing from US$38bn in 2023 to US$45bn to US$50bn India on Saturday inaugurated its first semiconductor assembly and test facility, a milestone in the government’s push to reduce dependence on foreign chipmakers and stake a claim in a sector dominated by China. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened US firm Micron Technology Inc’s semiconductor assembly, test and packaging unit in his home state of Gujarat, hailing the “dawn of a new era” for India’s technology ambitions. “When young Indians look back in the future, they will see this decade as the turning point in our tech future,” Modi told the event, which was broadcast on his YouTube channel. The plant would convert
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
New vehicle sales in Taiwan plunged about 37 percent sequentially last month as the long Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday cut short the number of working days, along with the lingering uncertainty over import tax cuts on US vehicles, market researcher U-Car said in a report yesterday. New car sales last month totaled 22,043, slumping from 35,073 units in January and down 19.89 percent from 37,515 in February last year, U-Car data showed. Sales of imported luxury cars, led by Mercedes-Benz, plummeted about 45 percent to 3,109 units last month from 5,663 units in the previous month,
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