EU finance ministers met yesterday to seek progress on how to close down a failing bank before it damages the underlying economy, a divisive issue for those reluctant to hand more power to Brussels.
Sharp differences emerged on Friday at informal talks in Vilnius over a planned Banking Union, the new regulatory framework meant to ensure that the taxpayer no longer foots the bill for bailing out over-extended bans.
The idea was accepted initially as essential to head off future crises, but several member states, including Germany and non-euro UK, are now uneasy about how it will be implemented in practice.
“So far there have been cannon shots going back and forth,” Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said as he went into yesterday’s meeting.
Dijsselbloem, who is also head of the 17 eurozone finance ministers group, added: “We will have an interesting debate over the next few months ... we should have these discussions rather quickly and finish by November, December.”
He insisted that the Banking Union plan was not being watered down, noting that much progress had been made, with the first step, the Single Supervisory Mechanism, approved on Thursday by the European Parliament.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday. A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported. One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed
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