ISRAEL
Growth slows on investment
The nation’s economy expanded slower than previously estimated last year as exports and capital investment declined, the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday. GDP rose 2.3 percent from 2014, driven largely by private consumption, the bureau said. The bureau previously estimated 2.5 percent expansion. Earlier this week, the Bank of Israel cut its growth estimate for last year to 2.8 percent, from 3.3 percent three months ago. Exports fell 3 percent for last year, while capital investment declined 1.5 percent, the bureau said.
PETROLEUM
US ships crude oil overseas
The first US shipment of crude oil to an overseas buyer departed a Texas port on Thursday, just weeks after a 40-year ban on most such exports was lifted. The Theo T tanker left NuStar Energy LP’s dockside facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, along the western shore of the Gulf of Mexico, NuStar spokeswoman Mary Rose Brown said in an e-mail. The ship is carrying a cargo of oil and condensate from ConocoPhillips Co’s wells in south Texas that was sold to Swiss trading house Vitol Group.
FINANCE
India to curb cooperatives
India is to crack down on errant financial firms that raise funds, mainly from millions of poor rural customers, through loosely regulated credit cooperative societies, the Indian Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare said. The federal government plans to penalize cooperatives that fail to repay investors when deposits come due or engage in other violations of regulations. One measure under discussion is to either have an independent regulator supervise credit cooperatives or bring them under the purview of an existing regulator, such as the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
CARMAKERS
General Motors to face trial
General Motors Co must face a jury trial this month on allegations that injuries from a 2014 car crash arose from the automaker’s ignition switch defect, a New York federal judge ruled. Despite having reached settlements with hundreds of victims, the Wednesday decision sets the stage for the first jury trial this year on the defect on Jan. 11, which turns off airbag deployment and has been linked to 124 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
BANKING
Bank admits tax evasion
Large cash and gold withdrawals were some of the ways Bank Lombard Odier & Co Ltd allowed US clients to sever a paper trail on their assets and cheat the US Internal Revenue Service, the Swiss lender admitted, agreeing to pay US$99.8 million to avoid prosecution. That penalty is the second-largest paid under a program to help the US clamp down on tax evasion through Swiss banks. Total penalties have reached more than US$1.1 billion. DZ Privatbank (Schweiz) AG is also to pay almost US$7.5 million under accords released on Thursday.
DATA STORAGE
EMC puts price on job cuts
EMC Corp, the data storage equipment company being acquired by Dell Inc for about US$67 billion in the biggest technology deal ever, on Thursday said its previously announced job cuts would result in an estimated US$250 million charge. The reduction is expected to be “substantially completed by the end of the first quarter of this year, with all the cuts finished by the end of the year,” EMC said in a regulatory filing, without specifying the number of jobs being cut.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
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