■ INVESTMENT
Russia ranks No. 3
A decade and a half after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has become a powerhouse of overseas investment, a study released yesterday showed. The study by the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management and New York's Columbia University found that the top 25 Russian companies in terms of foreign assets have a total of US$59 billion in foreign assets. That makes Russia the third-largest direct foreign investor among emerging markets, after Hong Kong and Brazil and "reveals a dramatic transnationalization of Russian firms," the study said.
■ INVESTMENT
Loan obligations rising
Sales of collateralized loan obligations, the source of funding that helped drive leveraged buyouts to a record earlier this year, rose 17 percent last month, Morgan Stanley analysts said. Banks increased sales of securities for making leveraged loans to US$10.1 billion from 16 deals, compared with US$8.6 billion from 13 transactions in October, analysts led by New York-based Vishwanath Tirupattur said in a research note on Sunday. Sales of the repackaged bank loans all but froze in July as rising defaults on subprime mortgages led investors to flee all but the safest of assets.
■ TELECOMS
AT&T unveils faster network
AT&T Inc said on Monday it had switched on its high-speed backbone network, which is designed to ferry data traffic across the US four times faster. AT&T has begun placing traffic on its so-called "ultra-long haul" network, which boasts a capacity of 40 gigabits per second, meaning consumers will be able to download large files quicker and more easily stream online videos to their computers. Carriers have been upgrading the backbone network -- the underlying pipes needed to move data across extremely long distances -- to meet the increasing demand in bandwidth-intensive programs and videos.
■ OIL
Prices are `suitable': OPEC
Oil prices, which have declined more than 10 percent from a record, are "controlled by speculators," OPEC secretary-general Abdalla el-Badri said. Current prices are "suitable," el-Badri said in an interview in Bali, Indonesia. OPEC supplies more than 40 percent of the world's oil. At its Dec. 5 meeting in Abu Dhabi, OPEC decided to leave production targets unchanged after ministers from the group said high prices weren't caused by a lack of crude oil supply. OPEC president Mohamed al-Hamli said that speculation, refining bottlenecks and political events are partly to blame for high oil prices, not a lack of OPEC crude.
■ AVIATION
Alitalia promised help
Air France-KLM pledged on Monday to return Italy's struggling airline Alitalia SpA to profitability, while a rival bidder attacked its planned takeover. The world's largest airline by revenue said in a statement that it planned to develop Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport hub and offer a wide range of European and intercontinental flights from the Italian capital. Earlier, the chief executive of Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, the main bank backing airline Air One SpA's rival bid to buy Alitalia, likened selling Italy's state-controlled airline to Air France-KLM to throwing it away. Alitalia is expected to choose between Air France or Air One to continue exclusive talks to sell the government's 49.9 percent stake.
PLA MANEUVERS: Although Beijing has yet to formally announce military drills, its coast guard vessels have been spotted near and around Taiwan since Friday The Taiwanese military is on high alert and is closely monitoring the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) air and naval deployments after Beijing yesterday reserved seven airspace areas east of its Zhejiang and Fujian provinces through Wednesday. Beijing’s action was perceived as a precursor to a potential third “Joint Sword” military exercise, which national security experts said the PLA could launch following President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visits to the nation’s three Pacific allies and stopovers in Hawaii and Guam last week. Unlike the Joint Sword military exercises in May and October, when Beijing provided detailed information about the affected areas, it
CHINA: The activities come amid speculation that Beijing might launch military exercises in response to Lai’s recent visit to Pacific allies The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday said China had nearly doubled the number of its warships operating around the nation in the previous 24 hours, ahead of what security sources expect would be a new round of war games. China’s military activities come amid speculation Beijing might organize military drills around the nation in response to President William Lai’s (賴清德) recent visit to Pacific allies, including stops in Hawaii and Guam, a US territory. Lai returned from the week-long trip on Friday night. Beijing has held two rounds of war games around Taiwan this year, and sends ships and military planes
Five flights have been arranged to help nearly 2,000 Taiwanese tourists return home from Okinawa after being stranded due to cruise ship maintenance issues, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced yesterday. China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) have arranged five flights with a total of 748 additional seats to transport 1,857 passengers from the MSC Bellissima back to Taiwan, the ministry said. The flights have been scheduled for yesterday and today by the Civil Aviation Administration, with the cruise operator covering all associated costs. The MSC Bellissima, carrying 4,341 passengers, departed from Keelung on Wednesday last week for Okinawa,
China is deploying its largest navy fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades, posing a threat to Taiwan that is more pronounced than previous Chinese war games, the Ministry of National Defense said today. Speaking in Taipei, ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang (孫立方) said the scale of the current Chinese naval deployment in an area running from the southern Japanese islands down into the South China Sea was the largest since China held war games around Taiwan ahead of 1996 Taiwanese presidential elections. China's military has yet to comment and has not confirmed it is carrying out any exercises. "The current scale is
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