■BANKING
Santander makes RBS offer
Spanish bank Santander said yesterday that it had made an offer to Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to buy about 300 banking branches in Britain. Santander, the biggest Spanish bank, revealed its offer in a statement to the Spanish stock market authority CNMV, but did not give the value of the bid. “Banco Santander announces that its affiliate Santander UK has submitted an offer in the tender process of approximately 300 branches of Royal Bank of Scotland that is taking place in the United Kingdom,” it said.
■ELECTRONICS
Sony discloses CEO’s pay
Sony Corp, which has posted two consecutive annual losses, said yesterday its chief executive has received around ¥800 million (US$8.8 million) in annual pay. Nearly half of Welsh-born Howard Stringer’s pay came from stock options, Sony spokeswoman Mami Imada said. Sony is the first major company to reveal executive pay under a new rule requiring Japanese corporations to disclose the compensation packages of executives earning more than ¥100 million.
■ELECTRONICS
LG to invest in solar cells
LG Electronics Inc, South Korea’s second-largest electronics maker, plans to invest 1 trillion won (US$828 million) by 2015 in its solar cell business. The Seoul-based company aims to generate revenue of 3 trillion won by 2015 and boost production capacity to almost 1 gigawatt within three years, from 240 megawatts at the end of this year, according to a statement yesterday.
■TRADE
Thailand’s exports up
Thai exports rose for a seventh straight month last month from a year earlier, hitting the highest level in almost two years in a welcome boost to the protest-hit economy, official data showed yesterday. Shipments soared 42.1 percent in the month to US$16.6 billion, the most since July 2008, as exports of key commodities such as rubber gained significantly, while imports rose 55.1 percent by value, lifted by increased demand for fuel and higher energy costs, the Thai Ministry of Commerce said.
■PETROLEUM
S&P downgrades BP
Standard & Poor’s became the latest rating agency to downgrade BP’s credit score on Thursday, as it warned the British oil giant faced soaring costs from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. “The downgrade reflects our opinion of the challenges and uncertainties that BP continues to face in the aftermath of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig,” it said in a statement.
■INTERNET
Criterion purchases Bebo
Criterion Capital Partners, a private investment firm based in California, said Thursday that it has bought social network Bebo from AOL. Criterion did not say how much it paid for Bebo, which AOL acquired in March 2008 for US$850 million. The company said in a statement that it was taking over Bebo immediately and planned to retain a San Francisco-based headquarters for the company.
■INTERNET
YouTube adds online editing
YouTube users can now edit their own videos online. The video-sharing site added an online editing tool this week that allows its users to combine multiple videos, shorten a video or add soundtracks from songs in the AudioSwap library. The newly created video can be published to YouTube directly from the editing site.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
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