GERMANY
Car registrations rise
New car registrations in Germany, a key measure of demand in one of the most important sectors of Europe’s top economy, rose sharply last month, marking a strong year as a whole for the industry, data showed yesterday. A total of 247,300 new cars were registered last month, an increase of 8 percent compared with the figure for the same month in 2014, according to data compiled by the automakers’ federation VDA. Taking the year as a whole, new car registrations advanced by 6 percent to 3.2 million vehicles, the statement added.
AVIATION
AirAsia targets funds
AirAsia Bhd, Southeast Asia’s biggest budget carrier, plans to raise as much as US$1 billion under a multicurrency medium-term note program to refinance debt and buy airplanes after last year’s plunge in the Malaysian ringgit pushed the carrier to a third-quarter net loss. The airline’s AirAsia Global Notes Ltd unit would issue bonds under the program in US dollars or other currencies, AirAsia said yesterday in an exchange filing in Kuala Lumpur. Deal managers Barclays Bank PLC, CIMB Group Holdings Bhd and RHB Investment Bank Bhd are to start arranging investor meetings in Singapore, Hong Kong and London from today, the airline said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Pound falls before report
The pound fell to a nine-month low against the US dollar before a report economists said would show growth in UK services slowed last month. The pound fell 0.3 percent to US$1.4639 as of 8:55am in London after reaching US$1.4620, its lowest level since April 14 last year. It was little changed at ￡0.7331 per euro. An uneven recovery has cast doubts on the probability of an interest rate increase this year by the Bank of England, sending sterling tumbling almost 7 percent since the middle of last year. The Markit Economics purchasing managers’ index for services fell to 55.6 last month, from 55.9 in November last year, analysts in a Bloomberg survey predicted before the report was due yesterday morning.
INTERNET
Netflix extends deal
Netflix Inc’s online video service is to feature more series and movies from DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc as part of a contract extension with the studio. Netflix secured the rights to DreamWorks programming everywhere in the world, but China. Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal will give Netflix more video likely to appeal to children, an audience segment that has played an important role in its service more than doubling in size to 69 million subscribers over the past three years.
INTERNET
Twitter mulls lifting limit
Twitter Inc appears ready to loosen its decade-old restriction on the length of messages in a bid to make its service more appealing to a wider audience accustomed to the greater freedom offered by Facebook and other forums. CEO and cofounder Jack Dorsey on Tuesday telegraphed Twitter’s intentions in a tweet after technology news site Re/Code reported the company is exploring increasing its limits on text from 140 characters to as many as 10,000. In his message, Dorsey wrote that Twitter has already noticed that many of its about 300 million users have already been including screenshots of lengthy texts in their tweets. He indicated Twitter is examining ways to give people more room to express themselves without polluting the service with gasbags.
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
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
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure
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