POLITICS
Trump still anti-AT&T bid
US president-elect Donald Trump remains opposed to AT&T Inc’s planned US$85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc, Bloomberg reported, citing people close to the president-elect. Trump, who has been silent about the transaction for months, told a friend in the past few weeks that he still considers the merger to be a bad deal, Bloomberg reported. He believed the deal would concentrate too much power in the media industry, Bloomberg said. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is also opposed to the deal, Bloomberg reported, citing another person.
RETAIL
Wal-Mart reaches Visa deal
Wal-Mart Stores Inc reached an agreement to continue accepting Visa Inc credit cards in Canada, ending the retailer’s threat to bar the world’s largest payments network from its 409 stores in the country. Customers in Manitoba and Thunder Bay, Ontario, would be able to use their Visa cards from yesterday, Alex Roberton, a spokesman for the retailer, said on Thursday in a statement. Wal-Mart’s Canadian unit threatened in June last year to expel Visa from all of its stores nationwide unless the network agreed to lower the amount it charges for credit-card transactions.
CYPRUS
Bank says it repaid bailout
Bank of Cyprus, the Mediterranean island’s largest lender, on Thursday announced it had paid back in full the 11.4 billion euros (US$12.07 billion) in Emergency Liquidity Assistance it received in an international bailout. The bank said in a statement that it was “another significant milestone in the journey back to strength since 2013.” In March 2013, Cyprus clinched a 10 billion euro loan from the EU and IMF to bail out its troubled economy and oversized banking system. Under the terms of the deal, the government was required to close the island’s second-largest bank, Laiki, and impose a 47.5 percent haircut on deposits above 100,000 euros at Bank of Cyprus.
PORTUGAL
Lone Star ‘most promising’
Portugal’s central bank said on Wednesday an offer from US private equity firm Lone Star is the most promising bid to buy Novo Banco SA, the so-called good bank salvaged by the Portuguese government from the collapse of major lender Banco Espirito Santo SA. The Bank of Portugal said it has invited the fund, based in Dallas, Texas, to “deepen negotiations” over the possible purchase, though it said rival bidders have expressed a willingness to improve their offers and would not be excluded. The statement gave neither price tag nor date for a final decision. It did not name the other bidders.
SERVICES
UK sees 17-month high
A survey of Britain’s services sector, which accounts for the bulk of the economy, shows it grew at a 17-month high at the end of last year. The purchasing managers’ index, a gauge of business activity, rose for a third month to 56.2 points last month from 55.2 in November. The index, published on Thursday by IHS Markit and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, is on a 100-point scale, with figures above 50 indicating growth. The improvement was due to an increase in new work and comes despite uncertainty over the country’s decision to leave the EU. Britain says it will trigger the two-year Brexit process by the end of March.
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
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
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