UNITED STATES
Duties imposed on gum
The US Department of Commerce on Friday said it had set preliminary duties up to 154 percent on imports of a food additive and thickening agent from China and Austria to offset what it said were unfairly low prices. The ruling is a victory for CP Kelco, a family-owned Atlanta-based company which filed a petition last year asking for anti-dumping duties on xanthan gum from the two countries. The US imported US$25 million of the gum from Austria and US$64 million from China in 2011. The department set a preliminary duty of 17.18 percent on imports from Austria and duties ranging from 21.69 percent to 154.07 percent on imports from China. The department will issue final duty determinations in May.
TECHNOLOGY
Hulu CEO to leave in April
Hulu LLC chief executive officer Jason Kilar said he is leaving the online video service two months after receiving a multimillion-dollar payout. Kilar, 41, will step down by April and is working with Hulu’s board on a transition, according to a statement yesterday on the company’s Web site. Chief technology officer Rich Tom will also exit. “The loss of Jason is a negative for all the media companies involved,” BTIG LLC analyst Rich Greenfield wrote in an e-mail. “Consumers lost one of the few executives who really understood how to put the consumer experience and user interface ahead of the business model.”
RETAIL
Bookseller’s sales fall flat
Barnes & Noble Inc posted a decline in retail sales in the holiday season as the largest US bookstore chain’s efforts to take on Apple Inc’s iPad with tablet-style Nooks fell flat with shoppers. Sales sank 11 percent to US$1.2 billion, the New York-based company said yesterday in a statement. Revenue at the Nook unit, which includes devices, accessories and content, fell 13 percent to US$311 million. The retailer released two new versions of the Nook tablet for the holidays, around the same time Apple introduced a smaller version of the iPad designed to keep customers from buying low-cost tablets from competitors. “Success of the iPad mini likely pressured sales of Nook tablets,” Stifel Financial Corp analyst David Schick wrote in a note yesterday. “It’s a challenging marketplace for them to compete with the likes of Apple and Amazon,” Michael Souers, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s in New York, said today in an interview. “It looks pretty bleak, long-term.”
AIRLINES
Pilots offered unpaid leave
Singapore Airlines (SIA) has asked its captains to volunteer for unpaid leave amid a global economic slowdown that has dented long-haul travel demand, the airline said yesterday. The move came nearly a year after the company — considered a bellwether for the full-service airline industry — made a similar offer to its first officers. The airline has also frozen its intake of cadet pilots as part of a slew of cost-cutting measures. SIA has “a temporary surplus of pilots and are managing it through this scheme, which is entirely voluntary,” company spokesman Nicholas Ionides said. “The surplus of captains is limited and we regard it as temporary,” he added. SIA has more than 2,400 pilots — mostly captains and first officers. The global financial crisis had led to excess capacity and slower growth than anticipated, Ionides said.
DIVIDED VIEWS: Although the Fed agreed on holding rates steady, some officials see no rate cuts for this year, while 10 policymakers foresee two or more cuts There are a lot of unknowns about the outlook for the economy and interest rates, but US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled at least one thing seems certain: Higher prices are coming. Fed policymakers voted unanimously to hold interest rates steady at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent for a fourth straight meeting on Wednesday, as they await clarity on whether tariffs would leave a one-time or more lasting mark on inflation. Powell said it is still unclear how much of the bill would fall on the shoulders of consumers, but he expects to learn more about tariffs
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
NOT JUSTIFIED: The bank’s governor said there would only be a rate cut if inflation falls below 1.5% and economic conditions deteriorate, which have not been detected The central bank yesterday kept its key interest rates unchanged for a fifth consecutive quarter, aligning with market expectations, while slightly lowering its inflation outlook amid signs of cooling price pressures. The move came after the US Federal Reserve held rates steady overnight, despite pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut borrowing costs. Central bank board members unanimously voted to maintain the discount rate at 2 percent, the secured loan rate at 2.375 percent and the overnight lending rate at 4.25 percent. “We consider the policy decision appropriate, although it suggests tightening leaning after factoring in slackening inflation and stable GDP growth,”
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
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