FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Australia to trade yuan
China will start direct trading between the yuan and the Australian dollar from tomorrow, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said. Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd and Westpac Banking Corp have been approved by the People’s Bank of China as market makers for the direct trading of the currencies, Gillard said at a press conference in Shanghai yesterday. A formal announcement of the plan, which will see the Australian dollar become the third major currency allowed to have direct trading links with the yuan, will be made today, she said.
JAPAN
Accounts log monthly surplus
Authorities posted the nation’s first current account surplus in four months in February, reflecting narrower trade deficits and robust income receipts from investments overseas, government data showed yesterday. The current account balance, the broadest measure of the nation’s trade with the rest of the world covering trade in goods, services, tourism and investment, logged a surplus of ￥637.4 billion (US$6.5 billion) in February. The monthly surplus nearly halved from the year-before surplus of ￥1.2 trillion, but reversed the deficit of ￥364.8 billion in January, data showed.
PORTUGAL
PM calls for spending cuts
Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho called for severe cuts in public spending after a court rejected a number of austerity measures, as the EU warned the debt-hit nation to respect the aims of its international bailout. In an address to the nation on Sunday night, Coelho said there would be no new tax hikes this year, but that measures would be taken to “contain public spending in the areas of social security, health and education.” He did not go into details of the anticipated cuts. His government has been involved in seeking to slash public expenditure by 4 billion euros (US$5.2 billion) by 2015.
SPORTS
Aon to sponsor football club
Insurer Aon is to sponsor Manchester United’s training kit and have its name attached to the club’s training ground under a new eight-year agreement announced yesterday. It is the first time United have sold naming rights to their training ground in Carrington on the outskirts of Manchester in northern England. The facility will be called the Aon Training Complex under the agreement that begins in July.
BANKING
Aquisition deal announced
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Japan’s biggest bank, agreed to acquire about US$3.7 billion of property loan assets from Deutsche Bank AG to boost its commercial lending on the US east coast. Mitsubishi UFJ’s UnionBanCal Corp unit is to acquire a commercial real estate lending portfolio from PB Capital Corp, a unit of the German bank, it said in a statement yesterday. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter.
BANKING
Rogue trader to join firm
Nick Leeson, the rogue trader whose wrong-way bets on Japanese stocks ruined Barings PLC, is joining GDP Partnership to help advise Irish borrowers seeking to re-negotiate debts with their banks in the wake of the real-estate bubble collapse. Leeson, who has lived in Ireland for more than 10 years, is to join GDP as a principal as it expands into Dublin, the company said in a statement tweeted by Leeson.
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
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
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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