■INSURANCE
AIG mulls options
Troubled US insurance giant American International Group (AIG) may take its casualty insurance unit public and sell a 20 percent stake, to raise billions of dollars to pay back public funds, a report said yesterday. AIG, taken over last year by the US government in a US$170 billion rescue from the financial crisis, is considering listing AIU Holdings, AIU’s vice-chairman Nicholas Walsh told the Nikkei Shimbun economics daily. “Because of what has happened to our parent company, we have to go on an independent track,” Walsh said. “It would be reasonable to conclude that a US listing was probably the most likely outcome.” The Nikkei said the specific timing would be decided later.
■AUSTRALIA
Business confidence jumps
Australian business confidence posted its largest quarterly jump in more than 30 years in the three months to this month as optimism grows over an economic recovery, a survey released yesterday said. Business confidence surged from minus 61 points to minus 4 in the quarter, its highest level since late 2007 and the largest quarterly turnaround since 1975, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Westpac Bank survey found. Westpac chief economist Bill Evans was cautious about the result of the 273-firm survey, saying that a simultaneous study of business conditions showed a modest rise of 3.9 points to 38.3. A business conditions reading below 50 indicates that more of the companies surveyed contracted than expanded, while a confidence reading below zero means more are pessimistic than optimistic about the future.
■ELECTRONICS
IBM chip alliance grows
Japanese electronics companies Toshiba Corp and NEC Electronics Corp agreed to join an IBM Corp alliance to expand development of next-generation chips, Toshiba said yesterday. The project involves technologies for faster processing speed and lower-battery life for smartphones and other communication devices, the companies said. Advanced chips for large-scale integration circuits for the 28-nanometer (nm) generation will “dramatically enhance the product’s density, performance, as well as power consumption compared to the former 40nm node,” NEC Electronics senior vice president Masao Fukuma said in a statement. Toshiba aims to mass produce and market products using the 28-nanometer technology in fiscal 2010, a company official said.
■AVIATION
China Eastern to buy A320s
China Eastern Airlines, one of the country’s top three carriers, said yesterday it had signed an agreement with Airbus to purchase 20 A320 aircraft for delivery between 2011 and 2013. The Shanghai-based carrier did not disclose in a statement filed with the Shanghai Stock Exchange how much it had agreed to pay but said it was less than the list price of 9.92 billion yuan (US$1.45 billion). The purchase reflects the company’s expectation for rising passenger demand in the domestic market, especially on short and medium-range routes, the statement said.
■AUTOMOBILES
Chrysler to restart plants
Chrysler Group LLC plans to restart seven plants at the end of this month after shutting down all of its factories during its six weeks in bankruptcy protection. The firm on Wednesday confirmed that factories in Sterling Heights and Warren, Michigan; St. Louis; Toledo, Ohio; Brampton and Windsor, Ontario; and Toluca, Mexico, would restart on June 29.
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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