■ELECTRONICS
World Cup boosts sales
South Korean firms are enjoying a boom in sales of 3D televisions thanks to rising demand stoked by the World Cup in South Africa, officials said yesterday. Samsung Electronics has sold more than 26,000 3D TVs in the domestic market so far this year, including 6,000 this month, thanks to the World Cup, a company spokesman said. Samsung’s domestic rival, LG Electronics, has also seen a jump in 3D TV sales this month, selling more than 3,000 units at home.
■BANKING
RBS cashes out of UAE
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank says it has agreed to buy the Royal Bank of Scotland’s retail banking business in the United Arab Emirates. The Abu Dhabi bank said yesterday that the deal was valued at US$100 million. The announcement comes a day after RBS said it had agreed to sell its operation in Pakistan to Faysal Bank Ltd for about US$50 million.
■BANKING
Swiss tax treaty passed
Swiss lawmakers approved a UBS AG tax treaty, ending a two-year legal battle with the US authorities that threatened the bank’s US operations. The agreement, through votes in both chambers of parliament, came after eleventh-hour negotiations between the upper and lower house, in which deputies dropped a demand for the treaty to be subject to a nationwide referendum.
■TRADE
Singapore exports soar
Singapore’s exports, led by electronics, surged last month, laying the groundwork for the city-state to post a second consecutive quarter of double-digit economic growth. Exports excluding oil rose 24 percent last month from a year earlier to S$13.5 billion (US$9.7 billion), according to Trade and Industry Ministry figures released yesterday. Sales abroad fell a seasonally adjusted 0.1 percent from April, it said.
■STEEL
POSCO invests in Africa
South Korea’s POSCO, the world’s fourth-largest steelmaker, said yesterday it was planning joint ventures in Zimbabwe as part of an effort to secure stable supplies of essential raw materials. The firm has signed a memorandum of understanding with Zimbabwe-based Anchor Holdings to cooperate in exploiting silica and other minerals, a spokesman for the South Korean firm said. The steelmaker said it also agreed to buy a 7.8 percent stake in a coal mine in Mozambique but gave no value for the deal.
■INTERNET
AOL to sell Bebo
AOL, the once high-flying Web company, is close to selling the social networking site Bebo to a California-based private investment firm, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The newspaper, citing “people familiar with the matter,” said the exact terms of the deal were not available, but the selling price is a “small fraction” of the US$850 million AOL paid for Bebo two years ago. US technology blog TechCrunch reported AOL was selling Bebo for “US$10 million or less.”
■FINANCE
Mortgage buyers delist
Government-sponsored mortgage purchasers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to delist their shares from the New York Stock Exchange after having trouble meeting stock listing requirements. The companies’ regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, expects their shares to trade on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board, an electronic quotation service, starting next month.
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
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