ENTERTAINMENT
‘Mario Bros’ holds No. 1
The Super Mario Bros. Movie easily held its first-place position on North American movie screens this weekend, while its accumulated global total pushed past the US$1 billion mark, analysts said on Sunday. The video game-based film earned an estimated US$40 million for the Friday-through-Sunday period in the US and Canada for a domestic total so far of US$490 million, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported. With overseas earnings at US$532 million, its accumulated global total has reached US$1.02 billion. That makes The Super Mario Bros. Movie — a joint project of Universal Pictures, Nintendo Co and Illumination — the year’s first film to pass the billion-dollar mark and only the 10th animation ever to do so, The Hollywood Reporter said.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Astellas to buy Iveric
Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma Inc has agreed to acquire Iveric Bio Inc, which develops drugs to treat age-related blindness, for about US$5.9 billion. The deal, which is to be funded by cash and debt, is for 100 percent of Iveric Bio for US$40 per share, a premium of 75 percent to the drugmaker’s 30-day volume-weighted average price through the end of March 31, the companies said in a statement yesterday. Iveric Bio shares closed at US$32.89 on Friday. The acquisition gives Astellas a key product to offer therapies for blindness and eye conditions, a growth area identified by the company as it seeks to make up for declining sales of other products. Iveric Bio is developing a drug to treat geographic atrophy, a condition that leads to the loss of retinal tissue in the eye.
FRANCE
Fitch cuts credit rating
The nation’s credit rating was cut by Fitch Ratings in another blow to politically embattled President Emmanuel Macron as he tries to bolster the country’s public finances with unpopular overhauls. Fitch reduced France’s credit rating to “AA-” from “AA,” with a stable outlook, bringing the eurozone’s second-largest economy to the same notch as countries including Ireland and the Czech Republic. France’s projected budget deficits for this year and next year “are well above” the median for countries with AA ratings, Fitch said in a note. It is only the second time France has been downgraded since Macron took office in 2017 and the first time by one of the three major rating firms. In 2020, DBRS Morningstar cut France to “AA (high)” from the top-notch “AAA.”
EDUCATION
Byju’s offices raided
Byju’s, India’s most valuable start-up, sought to reassure employees and partners after a weekend raid of the education company’s offices by the agency that investigates money laundering in the country. Indian Directorate of Enforcement officials searched the Bengaluru-based start-up’s offices and seized documents and digital data, the agency wrote in a post on Twitter. The probe is occurring under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, it said. The investigations come as the company, valued at US$22 billion, is in talks with investors to raise funds to address a liquidity crunch. The firm had also been trying to appease creditors seeking restructuring of a US$1.2 billion term loan after the once high-flying start-up missed deadlines to file financial accounts for the year to March 31 last year. The company, which claims to have 150 million registered students, offers education programs through an app service.
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.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
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
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