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.
‘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
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
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