BANKING
HSBC denied request
HSBC Holdings PLC was denied a request for dismissal of a lawsuit by a group of Taiwanese banks that accuse HSBC Bank USA of helping deceased financier Danny Pang’s (彭日成) PEM Group (保盛豐集團) defraud them of more than US$500 million. US District Judge Philip Gutierrez on Thursday rejected HSBC’s arguments that the banks should have brought their claims in the British Virgin Islands, where the PEMGroup entities that issued the securities were based, rather than in Los Angeles. He also dismissed contentions that the banks didn’t provide enough facts to support their fraud and conspiracy claims. Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南商業銀行) claimed US$191 million in losses; Hua Nan Investment Trust (華南永昌投信) US$48 million; Cosmos Bank Taiwan (萬泰銀行) US$45 million; EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰商業銀行) US$50 million; Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) US$122 million; and Taichung Commercial Bank (台中商業銀行) US$70 million, according to their complaint in October last year.
STEEL
ArcelorMittal to expand
Global steel giant ArcelorMittal will create 8,900 construction and mining jobs with a US$2.16 billion expansion of its Quebec mining complex near Labrador. The Luxembourg-based company said on Friday that annual production of iron ore concentrate will increase to 24 million tonnes from 14 million tonnes by 2013. ArcelorMittal Mines Canada is also evaluating doubling its iron ore pellets output to 18.5 million tonnes.
GOLD
Exchange to start gold funds
The Shanghai Gold Exchange is planning to start exchange-traded funds, tapping rising demand in China, the world’s biggest investment market for the precious metal. “There are some complexities, as the central bank is in charge of gold management, while we still need to go through the procedures for launching new exchange products,” Wang Zhe (王喆), chairman of the bourse, said at a Shanghai forum. There is no timetable and the exchange is working with regulators on the plan, Wang said. China is the world’s largest gold producer and second-largest in overall consumption. Gold investment demand by China more than doubled in the first quarter, overtaking India to become the largest market for gold coins and bars, the World Gold Council said on Thursday.
FINANCE
IMF approves Portugal loan
The IMF on Friday approved a 26 billion euro (US$36.9 billion) three-year loan to Portugal as part of an EU bailout of the struggling eurozone country. The “front-loaded program makes about 6.1 billion euros “immediately available to Portugal” from the IMF, the Washington-based institution said in a statement. EU finance ministers on Monday backed a three-year, 78 billion euro EU-IMF bailout for Portugal on condition Lisbon embarks on a major raft of public sell-offs.
ELECTRONICS
IBM briefly tops Microsoft
IBM briefly topped Microsoft in market value on Wall Street on Friday to become the second-largest technology company after Apple. However, IBM shares lost 0.25 percent to close at US$170.16, giving the New York-based company known as “Big Blue” a market capitalization of US$206.1 billion. Microsoft shares shed 0.91 percent to close at US$24.49, giving the US software giant a market capitalization of US$206.5 billion.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
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