GERMANY
Business confidence dives
A closely watched survey is showing that business confidence has fallen to a near five-year low as managers’ expectations for the coming six months have deteriorated. The Ifo institute yesterday said that its monthly confidence index slipped to 97.4 points this month from 97.9 last month, in line with market expectations. The third straight monthly fall takes the index to its lowest since November 2014 and was entirely due to managers’ waning views of future prospects. Their assessment of the current situation rose modestly from last month.
BANKING
Deposit protection planned
New Zealand is one of the few developed countries where people with bank savings have no recourse if their bank fails, but Minister of Finance Grant Robertson yesterday announced plans for a program aimed at individual account holders that would guarantee bank deposits of up to NZ$50,000 (US$33,000). The plan would fully protect about 90 percent of savers and cover about 40 percent of the total NZ$352 billion in bank deposits, he said. The program should be finalized into legislation next year, he added.
AVIATION
Lufthansa adjusts dividends
Deutsche Lufthansa AG has adjusted its dividend policy in a bid to soothe investor worries a week after issuing its second profit warning this year. The airline is to rebase payments to 20 percent to 40 percent of adjusted net income, which would provide flexibility to pay attractive dividends, a spokesman said yesterday. Lufthansa previously paid out 10 percent to 25 percent of earnings before interest and tax. The new policy would help achieve more continuity and would be adjusted for one-time gains and losses, Lufthansa said.
ELECTRONICS
Erajaya shares rise
Shares of PT Erajaya Swasembada, an Indonesian distributor of Apple Inc’s iPhones and Samsung Electronics Co’s smartphones, yesterday headed for the biggest gain in more than a year after it said it was close to a tie-up with electronic cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs Inc. Erajaya would announce details of the partnership soon, president director Budiarto Halim said yesterday. “I’m currently bound by a non-disclosure agreement,” he said. Juul has signed a distribution deal with one of Erajaya’s units and would begin to retail e-cigarettes in greater Jakarta area, Java and Bali from the end of this month, Citigroup Inc said.
SAUDI ARABIA
Residency plan announced
The kingdom has opened applications for a permanent residency program designed to attract foreign investment, priced at 800,000 riyals (US$213,000). A one-year renewable residency is to cost 100,000 riyals. The residencies would allow foreigners to buy property and do business without a local sponsor, switch jobs and exit the kingdom easily and sponsor visas for family members. Applicants must be at least 21 years old, prove financial solvency and have a clean criminal record.
RUSSIA
Crackdown on Georgian wine
The consumer watchdog agency yesterday said it is tightening checks on Georgian alcohol imports after seeing an increase in cases of sub-standard wine. The move comes after a speech by a Russian lawmaker in Georgia’s parliament sparked protests and led to President Vladimir Putin banning the nation’s airlines from flying to Georgia.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
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