■ENERGY
Taipower touts green effort
Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower, 台電) plan to give discounts to those who conserve electricity has borne fruit, the state-owned company said yesterday. Since the incentive measures were introduced in July 2008, the public had conserved 7.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity — 2.593 billion in 2008, 3.756 billion last year and 984 million in the first four months of this year. Under the incentive plan, if residents use less electricity over a two-month period than they did during the same period the previous year, the company charges them a discounted rate. The conservation efforts cut electricity fees by NT$24.94 billion (US$785 million), an average of NT$2,010 for each of Taiwan’s 12.41 million households. Taipower also cut its fuel costs by NT$28.958 billion and carbon dioxide emissions by 4.66 million tonnes during the period.
■MINING
Billiton-Rio merger in doubt
BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto might re-evaluate plans to merge their Western Australian iron ore operations if an agreement is not reached by the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal said yesterday. It reported BHP chief executive Marius Kloppers as saying that said the deal’s completion was hampered by a proposed new Australian tax on mining profits. “I still want to do it,” the Journal quoted Kloppers as saying on Friday. “We have many hurdles to jump through, and the tax brings in uncertainty.” The new 40 percent resource rent tax has angered the mining industry generally and sparked talk among some of reconsidering Australian projects.
■AUTOMOBILES
Daimler might exit NYSE
German car maker Daimler AG wants to pull its shares off the New York Stock Exchange because of low trading volume and to reduce the complexity of its financial reports, the company said on Friday. Daimler, the maker of Mercedes-Benz and Smart automobiles and one-time owner of Chrysler, told the stock exchange of its intentions on Friday, and has applied to delist with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, spokesman Han Tjan said. Normally it takes about 10 business days from the application date for shares to be removed from the exchange, Tjan said.
■AVIATION
EasyJet founder resigns
EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou has resigned from the airline’s board, the British group announced on Friday, amid a row over strategy. He was joined in stepping down from the board by fellow non-executive director Bob Rothenberg. “The stated reason for their resignation is that Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou wishes to gain greater freedom to exercise EasyGroup’s rights as a shareholder in the company to seek a change in the company’s strategy,” EasyJet said in a statement.
■EUROZONE
Spain considers tax hike
Spain’s government, under pressure from markets and its EU partners, said on Friday that it is considering taxes hikes to help slash the public deficit, in addition to other unpopular measures already announced. “We are considering the situation, and we don’t rule out anything,” Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said in reply to a question about the possibility of a tax increase. The remark came after Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Wednesday announced a 15-billion-euro austerity package, including a 5 percent pay cut for civil servants.
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
MARKET SHIFTS: Exports to the US soared more than 120 percent to almost one quarter, while ASEAN has steadily increased to 18.5 percent on rising tech sales The proportion of Taiwan’s exports directed to China, including Hong Kong, declined by more than 12 percentage points last year compared with its peak in 2020, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday last week. The decrease reflects the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains, driven by escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington. Data compiled by the ministry showed China and Hong Kong accounted for 31.7 percent of Taiwan’s total outbound sales last year, a drop of 12.2 percentage points from a high of 43.9 percent in 2020. In addition to increasing trade conflicts between China and the US, the ministry said
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