CONSUMER GOODS
Reckitt might sell unit
Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC’s plan to review its infant nutrition unit and weigh options, including a potential sale, boosted shares of the maker of Lysol. The British consumer goods company is reviewing the business globally and has been informally gauging buyer interest in the operations, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the situation. The unit could be worth ￡5.5 billion (US$7.4 billion), an estimate by Jefferies showed.
INTERNET
PriceRunner sues Google
Alphabet Inc’s Google is being sued by Nordic price comparison provider PriceRunner AB for about 22 billion kronor (US$2.4 billion) at Sweden’s patent and market court. The lawsuit follows the conclusion of a legal ruling in the EU that established Google has breached antitrust laws by manipulating search results in favor of its own comparison-shopping services, PriceRunner said in a statement yesterday. It is also about job opportunities and a matter of survival for many European entrepreneurial companies, it said.
TRAVEL
Crystal Cruises ships seized
Two Crystal Cruises ships operating under a Genting Hong Kong Ltd (雲頂香港) unit have been seized in the Bahamas after a fuel supplier sought their arrest for US$4.6 million in unpaid bills, according to a video filmed by crew and the Cruise Law News Web site. The Crystal Symphony and Crystal Serenity were seized late on Friday night in Freeport in the Bahamas, said Cruise Law News, a site run by Jim Walker, a maritime lawyer based in Florida. The luxury cruise ships were anchored in Freeport on Saturday.
CUBA
New tax for food sales
Havana on Saturday announced a new 10 percent tax on retail food sales, as the nation endures economic woes marked by rampant inflation. The levy, which took effect yesterday, targets self-employed people and small and medium-sized companies in the retail food sector, said the decree published in the official government gazette. The sales were only allowed starting in August last year as part of government reforms. The nation imports 80 percent of the food it consumes.
EUROZONE
Investors bet on rate change
Investors are betting that the European Central Bank (ECB) raises the deposit rate by 25 basis points in September and takes it to zero by the end of the year, following a shift in tone at last week’s Governing Council meeting. That is more aggressive than the time line that Klaas Knot, one of the ECB’s most hawkish policymakers, laid out in a TV interview on Sunday. A first hike could come in the fourth quarter, with a second one possibly following in the spring, he said.
REAL ESTATE
Home to be sold as NFT
A home along Florida’s Gulf Coast is to be auctioned off this week as a non-fungible token (NFT) in what is believed to be among the first such transactions in the US. In the case of the four-bedroom home in Gulfport, Florida, California-based real-estate technology company Propy is to mint the property rights into a digital token and host an online auction, with bids starting at US$650,000. Minting property rights into an NFT would allow owners to sell a home as quickly as a Venmo transaction, said Leslie Alessandra, the home’s current owner.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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