BANKS
AgBank president resigns
The president of China’s third-biggest lender by assets, Agricultural Bank of China Ltd (AgBank, 中國農業銀行), resigned for personal reasons, the Shanghai Stock Exchange said in a statement on Friday. Zhang Yun (張雲), who was both the president of the bank and the vice chairman, was taken away to assist with an investigation, Bloomberg reported last month, citing people familiar with the matter. AgBank’s board approved the bank’s current chairman Liu Shiyu (劉士余) to be the acting president, the exchange said on Friday.
TELECOMS
HK mogul ups ZTE stakes
Richard Li (李澤楷), the billionaire who controls Hong Kong telecommunications company PCCW Ltd (電訊盈科), boosted his stake in Chinese network equipment maker ZTE Corp (中興) to 5 percent, a stock exchange filing showed. Li’s holding rose on Friday last week to the level that requires disclosure, after previously being at 4.94 percent, the filing showed on Friday.
AUTOMAKERS
GM reveals China SUV plans
General Motors Co (GM) plans to start selling a Chinese-manufactured Buick SUV in the US starting next year. The company said on Friday the Envision midsize SUV would be built at a factory in Yantai, China, that is part of a GM joint venture. GM spokesman Patrick Morrissey said the Envision was designed in Michigan and importing it from China would help GM respond quickly to customer demand. The company expects to sell three-quarters of the SUVs in China, Morrissey said.
MINING
De Beers shutters mine
A diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories is the latest casualty of slumping commodity prices. Anglo American PLC’s De Beers said on Friday it started the process of shuttering its Snap Lake diamond mine, putting it on care and maintenance status. The company is to decide in the next year whether the mine is viable longer-term. De Beers said 434 employees would lose their jobs immediately. About 120 would continue to work for the next one to nine months as operations are suspended.
BOOKSELLERS
Barnes & Noble shares fall
Barnes & Noble Inc shares tumbled 17 percent after the company posted a quarterly loss and weaker sales, hurt by sluggish online orders and a fast-declining Nook e-reader business. The company, which spun off its college bookstore division earlier this year, also has seen store closings eat into revenue. The company said the loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization came to US$20.5 million last quarter, while sales decreased 4.5 percent to US$894.7 million.
SOUTH AFRICA
Fitch cuts credit rating
The country’s credit rating was cut one level to “BBB-” by Fitch Ratings Ltd as economic growth slows, bringing it closer to a junk rating and in line with the assessment of Standard & Poor’s. The foreign-currency rating was reduced from “BBB” to the lowest investment grade, Fitch said on Friday. The outlook on the rating was changed to stable from negative. Standard & Poor’s changed the outlook on its “BBB-” rating to negative from stable earlier in the day.
Hypermarket chain Carrefour Taiwan and upscale supermarket chain Mia C’bon on Saturday announced the suspension of their partnership with Jkopay Co (街口支付), one of Taiwan’s largest digital payment providers, amid a lawsuit involving its parent company. Carrefour and Mia C’bon said they would notify customers once Jkopay services are reinstated. The two retailers joined an array of other firms in suspending their partnerships with Jkopay. On Friday night, popular beverage chain TP Tea (茶湯會) also suspended its use of the platform, urging customers to opt for alternative payment methods. Another drinks brand, Guiji (龜記), on Friday said that it is up to individual
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
The National Stabilization Fund (NSF, 國安基金) is to continue supporting local shares, as uncertainties in international politics and the economy could affect Taiwanese industries’ global deployment and corporate profits, as well as affect stock movement and investor confidence, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement yesterday. The NT$500 billion (US$17.1 billion) fund would remain active in the stock market as the US’ tariff measures have not yet been fully finalized, which would drive international capital flows and global supply chain restructuring, the ministry said after the a meeting of the fund’s steering committee. Along with ongoing geopolitical risks and an unfavorable
RSS