GERMANY
Crisis to affect performance
Europe’s sovereign debt crisis will dampen the German economy’s performance this year, the Ifo economic research institute said. While economic growth in Europe’s largest economy may accelerate to 1.3 percent next year, heightened uncertainty about the debt crisis will weigh on growth in the middle part of this year, Munich-based Ifo said yesterday. Ifo forecast expansion of 0.7 percent for this year.
SOUTH KOREA
Current account improves
South Korea’s current account surplus hit a six-month high last month as dividend payments to foreign investors declined and the service sector improved, figures showed yesterday. The surplus, the broadest measure of overseas trade, was US$3.61 billion last month compared with a revised US$1.73 billion in April and US$2.18 billion in May last year, the Bank of Korea said. It was the largest figure since a US$4.56 billion surplus in November last year.
BRAZIL
Stimulus package planned
The government announced a new US$4 billion economic stimulus package to combat stagnant growth. The program announced on Wednesday by President Dilma Rousseff focuses on a wide array of government purchases, from backhoes to motorcycles to military equipment. The economy grew just 0.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. The government maintains a target of 4 percent growth this year, but market forecasts put expansion at 2.2 percent.
FINANCE
Town heads for bankruptcy
The town of Stockton, California, was headed for the nation’s largest ever municipal bankruptcy on Wednesday after it failed to find a way to close a US$26 million budget shortfall. A victim of the collapse of real-estate prices, which wiped out its tax base, the Stockton city council decided late on Tuesday to implement a “pendency plan,” for managing curtailed spending ahead of a court filing for protection. “The city will file sometime before Friday, close of business,” city spokeswoman Connie Cochran said.
ENERGY
Gazprom debt declines
OAO Gazprom, Russia’s biggest company by market value, plans to reduce its total debt about 4.7 percent this year, while earnings may decline 10 percent. Debt is forecast to decline to 1.47 trillion rubles (US$44 billion) this year from 1.54 trillion rubles last year, the Moscow-based natural-gas producer and exporter said yesterday in a presentation. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization may decline 10 percent this year, chief financial officer Andrey Kruglov said in Moscow.
FINANCE
Barclays pays to settle
Barclays PLC and its subsidiaries will pay more than US$450 million to settle charges that they tried to manipulate interest rates that can affect how much people pay for loans to attend college or buy a house. The incidents occurred between 2005 and 2009 and sometimes took place daily, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Wednesday in announcing the settlement. A US$200 million civil penalty levied against Barclays is the largest in the CFTC’s history. Barclays also agreed to pay US$160 million as part of an agreement with the Justice Department’s criminal division on a related matter. It will also pay nearly US$93 million to British regulators.
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
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
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
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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