INDIA
Home loans face uncertainty
Home builders have increasingly been turning to non-bank lenders for funding as traditional financiers struggle under bad loans. However, following the government’s seizure of troubled shadow bank Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd this month, that avenue might be choked off too. With non-banking financial companies themselves struggling, “their disbursal of loans to developers has slowed significantly,” Anarock Property Consultants Pvt chairman Anuj Puri said. This has “hijacked Indian real-estate’s growth story over the short to mid-term.” Things had been looking up for real estate, with apartment sales increasing 8 percent in the first nine months of the year and new project launches up 18 percent from a year earlier, according to Anarock.
AUSTRALIA
Study examines wage issues
A study of wage theft and working conditions among international students, backpackers and other temporary migrants has found that almost one-third earned A$12 (US$8.5) an hour or less, approximately half the casual minimum wage. The survey also found large-scale wage theft was worst in fruit and vegetable-picking and farm work, where 15 percent of workers earned A$5 an hour or less. The findings were published in the report Wage Theft in Australia published yesterday and authored by senior law lecturers Bassina Farbenblum, from the University of New South Wales, and Laurie Berg, from the University of Technology Sydney.
AUTOMAKERS
Fiat Chrysler eyes second
With a strategy of loading up its revamped Ram 1500 full-size trucks with new features ranging from 12-inch touch screens on the dashboard to large battery packs and electric motors to help adjust speed and gears and conserve fuel, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV is banking on a sustained surge in demand. Fiat Chrysler chief executive officer Mike Manley is reconsidering a decision announced in January to stop building Ram heavy-duty pickups at a plant in Saltillo, Mexico. That plant, and another in Warren, Michigan, between them would produce other Ram models and free up manufacturing capacity to make even more new trucks to eat into sales of Ford Motor Co’s F-Series or General Motors Co’s Chevrolet Silverado and its higher-end GMC Sierra. “We need to get ourselves into second” place, Manley told reporters. “Frankly, I don’t care which of the two I take share from.”
CRIME
Nokia linked to laundering
Nokia Oyj has been identified as the biggest individual recipient of potentially illicit funds relating to money laundering allegations against Nordea Bank Abp, investor Bill Browder said. As much as US$97.2 million that might have been laundered ended up in Nokia’s accounts at Nordea, according to a document focusing on potentially illicit transactions in Finland. Browder filed his complaint earlier this month to Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation and the prosecutor general. Nokia spokesman Brett Young said the allegations appear to be related to Nokia’s mobile-phone business, which it divested in 2014, and are thus “unrelated to our current operations.” Browder said he has evidence that as much as US$405 million was laundered through Nordea in a case he alleges is linked to the scandal engulfing Danske Bank A/S. He said that the money received by Nokia came from fictitious companies with accounts at Ukio Bank in Lithuania that were set up to launder money and evade taxes.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘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
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