PUBLISHING
Forbes sells majority stake
The publisher Forbes Media on Friday agreed to sell a majority stake to a consortium of Asian investors, concluding a protracted sales process in which a number of prospective bidders dropped out. The terms were not disclosed, but the transaction values Forbes Media at US$475 million, said a person close to the deal. Forbes’ new controlling shareholders are set to be Integrated Whale Media Investments (本匯鯨媒體投資公司), a group that includes the Hong Kong investor Tak Cheung Yam (任德章) and Wayne Hsieh (謝維恩), the Singaporean cofounder of AsusTek Computer Inc (華碩). The group hopes to leverage the Forbes brand, which has retained a gloss in Asia that it has lost in the US, to do deals in real estate, business clubs and financial services.
MANUFACTURING
GE reports industrial growth
General Electric Co (GE) reported second-quarter results on Friday that reflected a steady return to its industrial roots, as the giant conglomerate looks to accelerate the shift. GE, the largest industrial company in the US, said revenue from its industrial businesses, with products including jet engines, power generators, oil field machinery and medical imaging equipment, rose 7 percent. Revenue at its sizable finance unit, GE Capital, declined 6 percent. GE also announced on Friday that it intended to spin out its North American consumer-finance business, Synchrony Financial, in an initial public offering late this month. In its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it would sell 15 percent of the business to the public, 125 million shares, with US$24.50 a share as the midpoint of the expected price range.
MACROECONOMICS
Low inflation damaging: IMF
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde warned on Friday that low inflation could damage growth in Europe and urged the European Central Bank to maintain a flexible policy. She also urged caution over asset prices, saying they could be too high in relation to fundamentals. “Obstinately low inflation can seriously undermine growth,” said Lagarde, who recently hinted that the 3.6 percent global growth forecast for this year might have to be trimmed. The “good news,” Lagarde said, was that “European economies are beginning to emerge from the crisis.”
INNOVATION
Swiss regain top spot
Switzerland has claimed the top spot on the Global Innovation Index for the fourth consecutive year, while Sub-Saharan Africa “posted significant regional improvement.” The annual rankings, which this year focused on the role people play in the innovation process, found that Switzerland and other top-ranked countries Britain, Sweden and Finland, had strong all-round support systems that led to “high levels of creativity.” Nations of the BRICS group of emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India were catching up with the developed countries, the researchers from Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization said in a statement. “China significantly outperforms the average score of high-income economies across the combined quality indicators,” they added in a report released on the sidelines of a G20 trade ministers’ meeting in Sydney.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS