■BANKING
Silverton Bank closed down
US authorities on Friday closed down the Silverton Bank in Atlanta, Georgia, and created a “bridge bank” to take over its operations. Silverton Bank is the 30th bank to fail in the nation this year and the sixth in Georgia as the US reels from prolonged recession stemming from a home mortgage meltdown. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said in a statement that it had created a bridge bank to take over the operations of Silverton Bank after the bank was closed on Friday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
■AUTOMOBILES
Fiat in talks over Opel
The head of Italian carmaker Fiat SpA, which is in the process of acquiring US automaker Chrysler, is continuing talks with German officials about a possible takeover of General Motor’s Opel unit, according to media reports yesterday. Both the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and Focus magazine reported, citing unidentified sources, that Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne expected to meet German Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier tomorrow to present a concept for taking over Opel. Opel has said it needs 3.3 billion euros (US$4.3 billion) to get through the economic crisis, while the German government has said it doesn’t foresee giving direct state aid.
■JAPAN
Major firms reeling
Japan’s major companies slipped into the red for the three months through March 31, battered by a slump in exports following the global financial crisis, a newspaper reported yesterday. Combined pretax losses reported by the 262 non-financial firms listed on Japanese stock exchanges totaled ¥353 billion (US$3.6 billion) for the January-March quarter, a reversal from the year-earlier profits of ¥2.51 trillion, the Nikkei business daily said. Their quarterly revenue fell 24 percent from a year earlier, the paper said. For the full business year through March 31, pretax profit dropped 52 percent and sales slipped 5 percent, the first decline in both profits and sales since in the fiscal year to March 2002, it said.
■LENDING
MasterCard beats forecasts
MasterCard Inc posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Friday, but said revenue growth this year will fall short of its targets. The world’s second-largest credit card network said lower expenses and increased fees helped first-quarter results. Net income fell 18 percent to US$367 million, or US$2.80 per share, from US$447 million, or US$3.37 per share, a year earlier. The company’s bigger rival, Visa Inc, beat Wall Street earnings expectations earlier this week, helped by higher fees, lower expenses and increased use of its debit cards by consumers.
■INTERNET
Google rents goats
Internet innovator Google is taking advantage of an old-time principle to thwart wildfires: Goats will eat almost anything. Google has brought in about 200 of the grazers to munch fields around its campus in the Northern California city of Mountain View. “We have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard,” Google director of real estate and workplace services Dan Hoffman wrote in a posting on the company’s official blog. “Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we’ve rented some goats ... to do the job for us (we’re not ‘kidding’).”
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
CUSTOMERS’ BURDEN: TSMC already has operations in the US and is a foundry, so any tariff increase would mostly affect US customers, not the company, the minister said Taiwanese manufacturers are “not afraid” of US tariffs, but are concerned about being affected more heavily than regional economic competitors Japan and South Korea, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said. “Taiwan has many advantages that other countries do not have, the most notable of which is its semiconductor ecosystem,” Kuo said. The US “must rely on Taiwan” to boost its microchip manufacturing capacities, Kuo said in an interview ahead of his one-year anniversary in office tomorrow. Taiwan has submitted a position paper under Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act to explain the “complementary relationship” between Taiwan and the US
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