■ ENTERTAINMENT
Disney raises park prices
Walt Disney World is raising ticket prices for the third time in two years, company officials said. An adult one-day, one-park pass will rise 6 percent to US$71 beginning today. Discount packages also will be affected, but the per-day cost could be less than US$23 for adults who buy a 10-day package. The change is due to an annual planning cycle of travel wholesalers, tour organizers and commercial publications, Disney officials told the Orlando Sentinel. "We strongly believe that Walt Disney World represents a great entertainment value. Our guests agree," spokesman Rick Sylvain told the newspaper. Disney last raised prices last August when a one-day, one-park ticket went from US$63 to US$67.
■ ELECTRONICS
Samsung back on line
South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co said yesterday that all six chip production lines at its plant near Seoul resumed normal operations after disruptions owing to a power failure a day earlier. Losses stemming from the disruption would not exceed 40 billion won (US$43.3 million), below its initial estimate of 50 billion won, the company said in a statement. Production at the six chip lines at the plant was disrupted after a power system exploded on Friday.
■ FOOTWEAR
Nike opens Beijing store
Nike opened a flagship store in Beijing on Friday, increasing its presence in the key market as China's economy grows and the 2008 Olympics approach. The Beijing store is the largest of about 3,000 Nike retail destinations in China. Nike previously sold products through other retail stores there, including some owned by partner companies or at Nike outlet stores. This is the company's first Nike-branded and owned retail store in China. The Beaverton-based company says China is poised to be a US$1 billion business and Nike's second-largest market in the world.
■ BANKING
M&A deals double in value
The value of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in Asia's banking industry nearly doubled last year, with India and China clinching the greatest number of deals, a report said yesterday. Excluding Japan, total banking M&A volume soared 96.1 percent to US$30 billion last year from US$15.3 billion the previous year, market researcher The Asian Banker said. The jump was driven by "intensified domestic market consolidation and increasingly capital-rich banking institutions snapping up stakes in the region," senior research analyst Benny Zhang said. Cross-border deals within the Asia-Pacific region more than quadrupled to US$4.2 billion from US$900 million the previous year.
■ ONLINE AUCTIONS
Court favors winning bidder
The Supreme Court in Sydney yesterday ruled that a notification a bid had won was legally binding. The case pitted a vendor who refused to hand over a vintage plane to a winning bidder after receiving a better offer elsewhere. The decision was welcomed by eBay Australia spokesman Daniel Feiler, who said it was the first time to his knowledge that a vendor had been taken to court for refusing to relinquish an item that had been sold. The World War II aircraft had been put up for sale with a reserve price of A$150,000 (US$126,000). With 20 seconds left before the auction closed, a bid of A$150,000 arrived and the bidder was notified he had won. The seller then declined to settle because he had received an outside offer of A$220,000.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of