AVIATION
Boeing 737 Max ‘safe’
Europe’s top aviation regulator said he is satisfied that changes to Boeing Co’s 737 Max have made the plane safe enough to return to the region’s skies before the end of the year, even as a further upgrade that his agency demanded would not be ready for up to two years. After test flights conducted last month, the EU Aviation Safety Agency is performing final document reviews ahead of a draft airworthiness directive it expects to issue next month, agency executive director Patrick Ky said. That would be followed by four weeks of public comment, while the development of a sensor to add redundancy would take 20 to 24 months, he said.
AUTOMAKERS
Daimler earnings snap back
Daimler AG’s earnings snapped back last quarter, with recovering vehicle sales and cost cuts giving the Mercedes-Benz maker the confidence to predict that momentum would last through end of this year. Earnings before interest and taxes surged to 3.07 billion euros (US$3.6 billion) for the three months ended last month, Daimler said on Thursday. The preliminary result far surpasses the average estimate for 1.61 billion euros among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. “Given the development of the third quarter, Daimler also expects a positive impact for the remainder of the year,” the company said. The luxury-car maker said its outlook assumes that there would be no further lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19. Daimler coped with the biggest disruption to the auto industry in decades better than feared, though it suffered a 1.68 billion-euro operating loss in the second quarter.
MINING
Australian firm plans layoffs
Coal miner New Hope Corp Ltd yesterday said it would lay off up to 75 percent of its workforce from its corporate headquarters due to uncertainty around approvals for its environmentally contentious New Acland mine. The layoffs come as the outlook for Australian coal has worsened given China’s halt on coal imports from the country and prices that last month hit decade lows amid a COVID-19 pandemic demand slump and abundant cheaper natural gas alternatives. Under the restructuring, the majority of executives at the Brookwater, Queensland, office would be made redundant by the end of next month, the company said. Total cuts would equate to about 90 workers, it added. New Hope has already laid off 175 employees at New Acland while it awaits approvals for stage 3 expansion of its Queensland project.
FRANCE
Equity loans planned
Paris plans to raise 20 billion euros ($23 billion) in quasi-equity loans for small firms hit by the COVID-19 pandemic by offering investors a state guarantee against the first 2 billion euros in losses, officials said. Fearing failures among firms which were already saddled with record levels of debt before the crisis, the government wants the program up and running by early next year as it battles the economic impact of the pandemic. Under plans to be presented to the financial sector on Monday next week, banks would first lend to small and medium-sized firms and then sell on 90 percent of the loans to institutional investors, people familiar with the proposals said. That would limit banks’ risk exposure to 10 percent of the loans, while also steering funds to viable firms. Since a public guarantee is involved, EU state aid regulators have to give the program their blessing, particularly the interest rate that would be charged.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last