■INVESTMENT
Buffett firm to join S&P 500
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc will soon join the S&P 500 and S&P 100 stock indexes after it acquires Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp (BNSF), Standard & Poor’s (S&P) said on Tuesday. Buffett’s company will replace BNSF in both indexes after shareholders approve Berkshire’s acquisition of the railroad company next month. Berkshire shareholders agreed to split the company’s Class B stock 50-for-1 last week, and that move gave Buffett’s company enough liquidity to meet S&P’s criteria. Berkshire shares jumped 8.2 percent to US$73.61 in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
■ELECTRONICS
LG swings to profit in Q4
South Korea’s LG Electronics said yesterday it swung to a fourth-quarter net profit thanks to robust sales of its flat-screen televisions and higher investment gains from its affiliate LG Display. The firm reported a net profit of 297.2 billion won (US$256.6 million) for October to December, compared with a net loss of 671.3 billion won a year earlier. The company said its fourth-quarter operating loss narrowed to 139.5 billion won from 309.8 billion, while sales rose 8 percent to 7.1 trillion won from 6.59 trillion. On Tuesday the firm announced a full-year net profit of 2.053 trillion won from 482.8 billion won a year earlier.
■SOFTWARE
Oracle plans to hire 2,000
Oracle Corp is planning to hire 2,000 sales and engineering employees, which will outnumber the cuts it is making at its latest acquisition, Sun Microsystems Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told the newspaper that his company, the leader in proprietary database software, is charting a new course with its US$7.4 billion acquisition of server and software maker Sun Micro. It has been widely speculated that Oracle will slash Sun’s work force after the acquisition is completed, though Oracle has not said how many jobs would be lost. But Ellison said Oracle’s 2,000 new hires would outnumber cuts in Sun’s head count once it’s absorbed.
■SOUTH KOREA
Account surplus swells
South Korea’s account surplus swelled to a record high last year — a big turnaround from a deficit the year before when foreign investors fled the country. The country’s broadest measure of trade and investment ended US$42.67 billion in the black last year, the Bank of Korea said yesterday. The figure was an all-time high, statistics official Kim Sung-hwan said. South Korea had recorded a deficit of US$5.78 billion in 2008, the first dip into the red in the current account since a shortfall of US$8.29 billion in 1997, when the country was hit by the Asian financial crisis.
■UNITED STATES
Budget deficit to narrow
The US government’s budget deficit is expected to narrow slightly to US$1.349 trillion this year but its fiscal outlook remains bleak amid mounting debt, estimates by Congress showed on Tuesday. Accumulating deficits beyond this year could double federal debt held by the public to US$15 trillion within a decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in a report. The warning came as President Barack Obama moved to unveil a partial spending freeze yesterday. The CBO, an independent nonpartisan agency that provides economic data to lawmakers, said the budget gap for this fiscal year would be “slightly smaller” than the record US$1.414 trillion chalked up last year.
UPDATED (3:40pm): A suspected gas explosion at a shopping mall in Taichung this morning has killed four people and injured 20 others, as emergency responders continue to investigate. The explosion occurred on the 12th floor of the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi in Situn District (西屯) at 11:33am. One person was declared dead at the scene, while three people were declared deceased later after receiving emergency treatment. Another 20 people sustained major or minor injuries. The Taichung Fire Bureau said it received a report of the explosion at 11:33am and sent rescuers to respond. The cause of the explosion is still under investigation, it said. The National Fire
ACCOUNTABILITY: The incident, which occured at a Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store in Taichung, was allegedly caused by a gas explosion on the 12th floor Shin Kong Group (新光集團) president Richard Wu (吳昕陽) yesterday said the company would take responsibility for an apparent gas explosion that resulted in four deaths and 26 injuries at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Zhonggang Store in Taichung yesterday. The Taichung Fire Bureau at 11:33am yesterday received a report saying that people were injured after an explosion at the department store on Section 3 of Taiwan Boulevard in Taichung’s Situn District (西屯). It sent 56 ambulances and 136 paramedics to the site, with the people injured sent to Cheng Ching Hospital’s Chung Kang Branch, Wuri Lin Shin Hospital, Taichung Veterans General Hospital or Chung
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘LAWFUL USE’: The last time a US warship transited the Taiwan Strait was on Oct. 20 last year, and this week’s transit is the first of US President Donald Trump’s second term Two US military vessels transited the Taiwan Strait from Sunday through early yesterday, the Ministry of National Defense said in a statement, the first such mission since US President Donald Trump took office last month. The two vessels sailed south through the Strait, the ministry said, adding that it closely monitored nearby airspace and waters at the time and observed nothing unusual. The ministry did not name the two vessels, but the US Navy identified them as the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson and the Pathfinder-class survey ship USNS Bowditch. The ships carried out a north-to-south transit from