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.
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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