■ TRADE
Malaysia, India eye FTA
Malaysia and India will begin negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) in January, a report said yesterday. Malaysian Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz was quoted as saying that a bilateral trade pact could boost Malaysia's exports to India by 1.3 times, or US$12 billion, by 2012. The talks would aim for a comprehensive bilateral agreement covering goods and services, investments and economic cooperation, the New Straits Times newspaper reported her as saying. Last year, India was Malaysia's ninth-largest trading partner, ninth-largest export destination and 17th-largest import source.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Fiat to invest in Brazil
Fiat is to invest nearly US$3.4 billion in South America's biggest car market, Brazil, over the next three years to boost in-country production, the CEO of the automaker, Sergio Marchione, said on Friday. The lion's share of the investment -- US$2.8 billion -- will go to expanding a factory that the company already has in the state of Minas Gerais, Governor Aecio Neves told reporters. The expansion will push the plant's production from a current 700,000 vehicles per year to more than 1 million in 2010, Neves said following a meeting with Marchione and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
■ BANKING
BoCom, HSBC to team up
Bank of Communications Ltd (BoCom, 交通銀行), part-owned by HSBC Holdings Plc, plans to cooperate overseas with the UK bank, BoCom chairman Jiang Chaoliang (蔣超良) said. The Chinese lender is seeking overseas acquisitions and branches, Jiang said yesterday at a conference in Beijing, without elaborating. The Shanghai-based lender in April raised US$3.3 billion in a Shanghai share sale. HSBC, Europe's biggest bank by market value, raised its ownership in BoCom to 19 percent from 18.6 percent after buying 172.5 million shares on the open market for HK$2.16 billion (US$278 million) on Oct. 23 and Oct. 24. The London-based bank has said it wants to return its holding in BoCom to 19.9 percent.
■ MINERALS
Rusal wants Norilsk stake
Aluminum giant United Company Rusal said on Friday that it would acquire a stake of 25 percent plus one share in metals conglomerate OAO Norilsk Nickel from former general director Mikhail Prokhorov if his former business partner does not buy him out. In exchange for turning over the stake in Norilsk to Rusal, Prokhorov's Onexim group will receive 11 percent of shares in Rusal plus an undetermined amount of cash, Rusal and Onexim said in a joint statement. However, the statement said, "the transaction is conditional upon non-acceptance of an offer to buy 25 percent of Norilsk Nickel made by Onexim to Vladimir Potanin." Potanin owns Norilsk Nickel.
■ ELECTRONICS
Sanyo disputes report
Sanyo Electric Co said a Nikkei newspaper report that it plans to book an additional ¥100 billion (US$926 million) loss for fiscal year 2000 is a "presumption" and that auditors were still finalizing past earnings. The company will make the auditor's report public when it is completed, Sanyo said in a statement to the stock exchange yesterday. Sanyo undervalued losses at poorly performing semiconductor and liquid-crystal-display units during a review of unconsolidated earnings for the period from fiscal 2000 to 2005, the Nikkei said yesterday. The additional loss would mean Sanyo was operating at a loss, the report said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
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