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.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
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