■ ENERGY
Hitachi, GE to team up
Japan’s Hitachi and US giant General Electric will team up to sell midsize nuclear reactors to meet growing demand for power facilities in Southeast Asia, a Hitachi spokesman said yesterday. The move comes as soaring crude oil prices and worries about global warming spur interest in nuclear power. The move is aimed at tapping into the markets in countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, where demand for reactors with output of one million kilowatts or less is expected to grow, spokesman Masayuki Takeuchi said.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Toyota 2Q sales up
Toyota Motor Corp, challenging General Motors Corp’s 77-year reign as the global auto leader, said preliminary second-quarter sales rose about 2 percent on higher demand in China and other emerging markets. The company sold about 2.406 million vehicles in the three months ended June 30, compared with 2.36 million a year earlier, Hideaki Homma, a spokesman, said by phone today. The company didn’t give a breakdown for regional sales. Toyota’s expansion to China, Brazil and other new markets made up for a drop in US sales in the period.
■ INTERNET
Joost opens in China
Internet TV service provider Joost said it launched a Chinese service yesterday with local portal TOM Online to tap the world’s largest online market. The company has also set up a joint venture with Hong Kong-listed TOM Group, parent of TOM Online, to bring a full Joost offering to China, Joost said in a statement posted on its Web site. “There’s a great market opportunity in China: content producers who are making high-quality content, advertisers eager to reach consumers online, and an active online community,” CEO Mike Volpi said. “Collaborating with TOM, which operates one of the most popular online portals in China, positions us strongly in the region,” he said in the statement.
■ TAKEOVERS
Tokio Marine buys US firm
Japanese non-life insurance giant Tokio Marine Holdings announced yesterday that it would buy US counterpart Philadelphia Consolidated Holdings Corp for about US$4.7 billion. The US firm’s board members agreed unanimously to a friendly takeover, Tokio Marine Holdings said in a statement. “Through the acquisition, our company aims to put a foot in a major non-life insurance market and realise a significant gain in income from overseas,” Tokio Marine, Japan’s largest non-life insurer, said in a statement. Under the deal, Tokio Marine Nichido, an affiliate of the Japanese non-insurance group, would form a new company in Pennsylvania that will merge with the US firm by December, subject to regulatory approval.
■ RETAIL
Costco earnings miss target
Costco Wholesale Corp, the largest US warehouse-club chain, said earnings will be “well below” analysts’ estimates after surging energy prices increased the retailer’s costs and made selling gasoline less profitable. Fourth-quarter earnings per share are expected to miss the US$1 consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by First Call, Costco said in a statement. The retailer also said it plans to buy back an extra US$1 billion of shares. Chief financial officer Richard Galanti said the company kept prices lower than planned to retain customers amid record fuel prices and the worst housing market since the Great Depression.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS