BANKING
Spain seeks to host EBA
Spain will compete with other countries in the EU to host the headquarters of the EU’s London-based bank regulator following Britain’s decision to leave the bloc, its deputy prime minister said on Friday. The race to host the European Banking Authority (EBA) is led by Paris and Frankfurt, but no decision has been reached and other countries have also put themselves forward in the scramble to give London’s agencies a new home. Spain has set up a working group to drive Spain’s bid for the EBA and for the London-based European Medicines Agency, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria told a news conference.
SRI LANKA
Central bank chief sacked
Sri Lanka’s president yesterday bowed to pressure from activists and replaced the country’s controversial central bank chief, appointing a respected economist to the top job. President Maithripala Sirisena announced that Indrajit Coomaraswamy, 66, had been appointed as the governor of the central bank, effective immediately. Coomaraswamy was previously a director of economic affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat, an intergovernmental agency of Commonwealth countries in London. The announcement ended any prospect of outgoing governor Arjuna Mahendran being reappointed after his tenure ended on Thursday.
UGANDA
Refinery talks to begin
The government invited a group of companies led by SK Engineering & Construction Co of South Korea to begin negotiations to build an oil refinery, as it suspended a deal with a rival Russian company. The state halted talks with RT Global Resources Consortium after the group made “additional demands” from the government before a deal was to be signed last month, the Energy Ministry said on Friday. The government reached an agreement in principle with the group led by RT Global, a unit of Moscow-based Rostec State Corp, in May.
INTERNET
Facebook to translate posts
Facebook Inc on Friday began testing a translation tool that will automatically let posts be displayed in languages users prefer. The leading social network first made the “multilingual composer” tool available earlier this year for use on pages representing companies, brands, groups and celebrities through its Pages service. The factors Facebook is to use to determine which language to use for posts include locales designated in account settings and which languages users routinely use for their posts. Half of Facebook’s more than 1.5 billion users worldwide speaks a language other than English.
FOOD
Flour recalled over E coli
General Mills Co is expanding its recall of certain types of flour in response to an ongoing outbreak of illnesses related to a strain of E coli bacteria. The Minneapolis-based company on June 1 voluntarily recalled 2.2 million kilograms of its Gold Medal, Signature Kitchens and Wondra flour that health officials say was the likely source of dozens of illnesses in 20 US states. The flour is largely produced at the company’s Kansas City, Missouri, plant. On Friday, the company expanded the recall to include flour made earlier in the fall that might still be in consumers’ pantries.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
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