■ Armani empire expands
Giorgio Armani's luxury lifestyle empire expanded on Sunday as he announced the launch of Armani-designed residences in a Dubai skyscraper billed as the world's tallest building. A statement from the designer's Milan headquarters said a sales office had been opened to start selling the 144 apartments planned for the ninth to 16th floors of the Burj Dubai, which is being developed by the state-owned Emmar Properties. The skyscraper, due to be completed by the end of next year, is also hosting the first Armani Hotel, featuring 160 rooms and suites, restaurants and a spa. Armani said the hotel and private residences -- some as large as 200m2 -- would "bring to life my vision of hospitality."
■ Investment
Stan O'Neal on the outer
Members of the board of US investment firm Merrill Lynch have largely decided that chief executive officer Stan O'Neal will no longer remain at the company's helm, and his decision was to be announced within 24 hours, some leading US newspapers reported on Sunday. However, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported on their Web sites that some details concerning O'Neal's departure still needed to be worked out. Those in the running for O'Neal's job include Laurence Fink, chief executive of money manager BlackRock Inc and Gregory Fleming, Merrill's co-president, the papers said. There could also be some power-sharing arrangement involving the two men, or a temporary solution to give the board more time to find a permanent replacement, the Journal said.
■ Banking
UBS warns of writedowns
UBS AG, Europe's largest bank by assets, said that difficulties in the US subprime housing market may lead to further writedowns. The Zurich-based bank, which reports its third-quarter earnings today, said yesterday that it was still exposed to "further deterioration in the US housing and mortgage markets as well as rating downgrades" on mortgage-related securities. The last three months of the year "started with good results from all businesses," including the investment bank, UBS said in an e-mailed statement. The US subprime problems mean "UBS is not assuming that the quarter will continue as positively as it has begun, or that the current difficulties will be resolved in the short term," the bank said. UBS also confirmed it will report a group loss for the third quarter of between 600 million Swiss francs (US$516 million) and SF800 million.
■ Currency
US dollar plummets
The US dollar plummeted to a new record low against the euro yesterday, as markets awaited an indication from Washington how the Federal Reserve will move later this week. The 13-nation euro opened trading at US$1.4428, before settling back to US$1.4424, still above the US$1.4393 it bought in New York on Friday. The US dollar began to sour last week on the G-7 summit's failure to address its weakness and on a spate of disappointing economic reports from the US. Markets are also looking ahead to the US Federal Reserve Bank's meeting tomorrow, amid fears that last week's run of downbeat economic data is underlining the fact that the Fed's last rate cut of 50 basis points clearly hasn't been sufficient to spur demand.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
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