AVIATION
Dreamliner arrives in Japan
Boeing Co’s 787 landed in Japan early yesterday to start a week-long dress rehearsal with All Nippon Airways Co (ANA), signaling the end is near to a delay of more than three years for the world’s first composite-plastic jet. The Dreamliner, which landed at Tokyo’s Haneda airport, will make test flights on ANA’s normal domestic routes. The exercises will ensure the plane fits into airport parking slots and can use boarding bridges and fuel hoses, airline spokeswoman Megumi Tezuka said. The trip is one of the final validations ahead of the 787’s entry into service as early as next month. Boeing missed the original May 2008 delivery target, stalling its ability to book profit from a model with an average list price of US$202 million and forcing customers to reshuffle their plans.
BANGLADESH
General strike held
A citizens’ group enforced a six-hour general strike in Dhaka yesterday, partially disrupting businesses and transportation, to demand that the government cancel a gas exploration deal with US energy giant ConocoPhillips. Last month, the government signed a production-sharing contract with the company to explore for gas in deep waters of the Bay of Bengal, but the National Committee on Protection of Oil, Gas and Mineral Resources, Power and Ports, says the agreement compromises the national interest. The country currently faces up to 780 million cubic meters of gas shortages each day.
CHINA
Growth target is ‘difficult’
The economic growth target for this year will be “difficult” to achieve, Vice Premier Wang Qishan (王岐山) said in a statement on the government’s Web site yesterday. It is hard to balance the economy and inflation “given complications and uncertainty in the global situation,” Wang told a conference in Hebei Province early this month, the statement said.
BEER
Fosters rejects takeover bid
The head of Australian beer giant Foster’s yesterday said he was not talking with SABMiller about their recent takeover bid, insisting his focus was on improving the business. Foster’s last month rejected an unsolicited A$9.51 billion (US$10 billion) offer from the international brewer, saying it undervalued the company, and chief executive John Pollaers said he was not engaged in further talks. “Our focus right now is just, fundamentally, turning this business around and making sure we realize the full potential of it,” he told ABC television’s Inside Business show. At the time of the offer, SABMiller said the proposal to buy Foster’s was in line with its strategy to create a global spread of businesses and it would continue to pursue discussions.
AUTOMOBILES
Chinese sales could pick up
Automobile sales growth may recover in the second half of the year after a slowdown in the first six months, Xinhua news agency said, citing the deputy head of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers Dong Yang (董揚). Auto consumption could rise from this month to December as liquidity is expected to ease, boosting consumer demand for mid and high-end passenger cars, Xinhua said, quoting Dong. A drop in oil prices and subsidies for -alternative--energy vehicles could also help to boost sales, it said. The rate of vehicle sales growth in the first half will be slower than the 4.2 percent increase during the first five months, Xinhua said, citing the auto association.
France cannot afford to ignore the third credit-rating reduction in less than a year, French Minister of Finance Roland Lescure said. “Three agencies have downgraded us and we can’t ignore this cloud,” he told Franceinfo on Saturday, speaking just hours after S&P lowered his country’s credit rating to “A+” from “AA-” in an unscheduled move. “Fundamentally, it’s an additional cloud to a weather forecast that was already pretty gray. It’s a call for lucidity and responsibility,” he said, adding that this is “a call to be serious.” The credit assessor’s move means France has lost its double-A rating at two of the
AI BOOST: Although Taiwan’s reliance on Chinese rare earth elements is limited, it could face indirect impacts from supply issues and price volatility, an economist said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 5.6 percent, citing stronger-than-expected exports and investment linked to artificial intelligence (AI), as it said that the current momentum could peak soon. The acceleration of the global AI race has fueled a surge in Taiwan’s AI-related capital spending and exports of information and communications technology (ICT) products, which have been key drivers of growth this year. “We have revised our GDP forecast for Taiwan upward to 5.6 percent from 4 percent, an upgrade that mainly reflects stronger-than-expected AI-related exports and investment in the third
Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽) shares surged to a seven-month high this week after local media reported that E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) had outbid CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) in the financially strained insurer’s ongoing sale process. Shares of the mid-sized life insurer climbed 5.8 percent this week to NT$6.72, extending a nearly 18 percent rally over the past month, as investors bet on the likelihood of an impending takeover. The final round of bidding closed on Thursday, marking a critical step in the 32-year-old insurer’s search for a buyer after years of struggling to meet capital adequacy requirements. Local media reports
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
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