PROPERTY
HK plans vacancy tax
Hong Kong’s government unveiled details of a planned tax on unsold new apartments, including potential jail time for developers who defy the rules. Developers would be required to submit reports annually on the status of apartments, with false statements punishable by a fine and a year in prison, a document submitted to the Legislative Council late on Tuesday proposed. Under the plan, a tax amounting to double an apartment’s annual rental value would apply after six months of vacancy. The proposal also plugs a loophole: Developers cannot beat the tax simply by selling a new apartment to an associated company. The government plans to introduce a bill containing the measures before the end of the legislative year in July.
PROPERTY
Evergrande faces fund gap
Hui Ka Yan (許家印), China’s second-richest man, has 17 billion reasons to keep him awake at night. His property developer, China Evergrande Group (恒大集團), has debt maturing in 12 months or less that exceeds its cash by 114 billion yuan (US$17 billion), its full-year report released late on Tuesday showed. The yawning gap is partly the result of a drop in its cash buffer in the second half of last year. The giant funding gap indicates that Hui’s efforts to whittle down a US$100 billion debt pile and put the firm on a more solid financial footing still have some way to go. It might also explain why the company was willing to pay yields as high as 13.75 percent on bonds it sold in October last year — an issue Hui personally invested US$1 billion in.
INTERNET
Line, Mercari join forces
Line Corp and Mercari Inc are joining forces on mobile payments as Japan’s Internet companies race to dominate cashless transactions in the world’s third-largest economy. The operator of Japan’s most popular messaging platform and the used-goods online marketplace app would let users shop and pay for purchases at stores that accept each other’s systems, they told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. They also launched an alliance to welcome other mobile payment providers.
AIRPORTS
Group buying GMR stake
A consortium including India’s Tata Group, a unit of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and SSG Capital Management, is to invest 80 billion rupees (US$1.2 billion) to buy a stake in GMR Airports Ltd. The deal would pump 10 billion rupees into GMR Airports, a unit of GMR Infrastructure Ltd and purchase 70 billion rupees of the airport unit’s equity shares from the parent, according to a statement. GMR operates Delhi International Airport Ltd, the nation’s biggest airport. The deal values GMR Airports at 180 billion rupees, the company said in a filing. After the purchase, Tata would hold 20 percent in the airport unit, while GIC would get 15 percent and SSG would own 10 percent.
MACROECONOMICS
Downside risks remain: ECB
European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi said that risks to the eurozone’s economic outlook remain tilted to the downside and a pickup in inflation is delayed, warranting a continued accommodative monetary policy that includes negative interest rates. “If necessary, we need to reflect on possible measures that can preserve the favorable implications of negative rates for the economy, while mitigating the side effects, if any,” Draghi said. “That said, low bank profitability is not an inevitable consequence of negative rates.”
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
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
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
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
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