MINING
Zijin fined for toxic spill
The Zijin Mining Group (紫金礦業集團), one of China’s biggest gold producers, has been ordered to pay 30 million yuan (US$4.62 million)a by a local court in Fujian Province for a toxic spill last year that caused severe environmental pollution. Long Yan City court also issued prison terms ranging from three years to 42 months to five of Zijin’s staff, who were found to be involved in the incident, Zijin said in a statement yesterday. The leak of wastewater containing acidic copper from its Zijinshan Copper Mine spilled into the Ting River in July, killing or poisoning thousands of fish and affecting water supplies for about 60,000 people.
CONGLOMERATES
Siemens Q2 profit surges
German industrial giant Siemens yesterday reported a healthy rise in net profit for its second quarter ending March and raised its earnings forecast for the current fiscal year. Second-quarter net profit was 2.8 billion euros (US$4.1 billion), up from 1.5 billion euros in the year-earlier period. Sales rose 7 percent to 17.7 billion euros, while orders surged 28 percent to 20.7 billion euros. “We’ve achieved outstanding, broad-based order growth. We’re raising our earnings forecast for fiscal 2011 to at least 7.5 billion euros,” CEO Peter Loescher said in a statement.
BANKING
BNP profit up on lower costs
BNP Paribas yesterday announced a 14.6 percent rise in first-quarter net profit to 2.62 billion from 2.28 billion euros a year earlier. The company attributed the strong performance in part to the reduced cost of its risks: It had 919 million euros of outstanding customer loans, down 418 million euros on the same period last year. It also made further cost savings from the integration of its 2009 acquisition of Fortis and strong performances from all its units, it said.
AUTOMOBILES
BMW sales boost profits
German luxury carmaker BMW said net profit in the first quarter rose strongly to 1.21 billion euros, as sales rose all around the world, particularly in China. That’s up from last year’s 324 million euros. Revenues rose 29 percent to 16.04 billion euros. Sales of the company’s BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce brands rose 13 percent in Europe, 17 percent in North America and 72 percent in China.
TELECOMS
RIM to use Microsoft’s Bing
Research In Motion (RIM) will use Microsoft’s Bing services on new BlackBerry smartphones. Microsoft Corp CEO Steve Ballmer made the announcement on Tuesday at RIM’s annual BlackBerry World conference in Orlando, Florida. Bing director Matt Dahlin outlined the plans on the Bing Search Blog, saying that BlackBerrys shipped to wireless carriers would use Bing as its default search and map services. Bing will be the BlackBerry browser’s preferred search engine. RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet already uses Bing for search and maps.
RETAIL
Amazon debuts sales site
Amazon on Tuesday unveiled a membership-only private sales site called Myhabit.com offering designer and boutique brands. The Seattle, Washington-based online retail giant said Myhabit.com would offer up to 60 percent off list prices on selected fashion products, such as designer clothing through daily events. “Myhabit gives fashion customers an elegant and easy-to-use online destination for private sale shopping,” Myhabit president Maria Renz said in a statement.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday. A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported. One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed
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