■ INVESTMENT
Tingyi plans TDR sale
Tingyi Holding (Cayman Islands) Corp (康師傅控股) may sell more than NT$10 billion (US$309 million) in shares in the form of Taiwan depository receipts (TDRs), the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing unnamed brokerages. Tingyi Holding is 36.6 percent owned by Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團), which operates the biggest instant noodle maker in China and runs Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品) in Taiwan. The paper said Ting Hsin was assessing the possibility of allowing Tingyi to issue TDRs and might submit its application to the Taiwan Stock Exchange by the first quarter of next year. No decision has been made yet, the paper said, citing sources from Ting Hsin.
■EMPLOYMENT
PRC migrants back at work
Nearly all the migrant Chinese workers laid off last year during the global economic crisis have returned to jobs in the cities because of an improvement in the employment situation, an official said yesterday. “Currently, 96 percent [of] rural workers who went back to the countryside have already returned to the cities to work or do business,” vice agriculture minister Chen Xiaohua (陳曉華) told reporters. “In certain places, there are even problems of a lack of workers.” By the latest estimate, China had 225 million migrant workers.
■INVESTMENT
Toyota lifts sales forecast
Toyota Motor Corp has raised its global sales forecast for the year to March next year by 3 percent to 6.7 million cars, the Tokyo Shimbun daily reported yesterday, in the latest sign of a nascent recovery in auto demand. Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is also raising its production in Japan by 8 percent to 6.45 million vehicles for 2009-2010, thanks to the impact of government subsidies and tax incentives on new fuel efficient cars, the paper said.
■AUTOMAKERS
Ford Canada to cut output
The Canadian Auto Workers union says Ford Canada intends to slash its Canadian manufacturing production from 13 percent of the company’s total North American output to 8 percent despite requests from its union to the contrary. Ford and the union have been negotiating a new labor contract since Sept. 8, but the two sides have reached an impasse over how much production the company intends to keep in Canada.
■LABOR
Argentine workers removed
Argentine police have used force to remove laid-off workers occupying a Kraft Foods plant in Buenos Aires since last month. The court-ordered evacuation could resolve a standoff that started when Kraft Foods Inc laid off about 160 of the plant’s several thousand workers. The union demanded the jobs back and seized the plant. They also occupied a major freeway, demanding government help. Argentina’s labor ministry and company executives met on Friday, reaching a deal to resume operations tomorrow morning and keep the plant’s remaining jobs.
■BANKING
BBVA to sell properties
Spain’s second-largest bank, BBVA, said on Friday it had reached an agreement to sell 948 property assets in Spain to a Deutsche Bank investment fund for 1.15 billion euros (US$1.7 billion) in a “sale and leaseback” deal. The sale of the assets, “most of which are offices,” will book BBVA some 830 million euros in gross capital gains, it said in a statement.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
DIVIDED VIEWS: Although the Fed agreed on holding rates steady, some officials see no rate cuts for this year, while 10 policymakers foresee two or more cuts There are a lot of unknowns about the outlook for the economy and interest rates, but US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled at least one thing seems certain: Higher prices are coming. Fed policymakers voted unanimously to hold interest rates steady at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent for a fourth straight meeting on Wednesday, as they await clarity on whether tariffs would leave a one-time or more lasting mark on inflation. Powell said it is still unclear how much of the bill would fall on the shoulders of consumers, but he expects to learn more about tariffs
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
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