■AVIATION
American delays new route
American Airlines said on Friday it was seeking to delay by a year its planned Chicago-Beijing service, set to begin in April next year. The largest US carrier said it had filed a request with the US Department of Transportation for a waiver to allow it to begin service between Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Beijing on April 4, 2010. The request “cited the extraordinary adverse market and operating conditions affecting the entire airline industry,” American Airlines said in a statement.
■JAPAN
Fukui to advise firm
Former Bank of Japan governor Toshihiko Fukui, who stepped down in March, is set to become a member of Matsushita Electric Industrial’s advisory panel, a newspaper reported yesterday. Matsushita, which is best known for its Panasonic brand, will ask Fukui to join its global affairs advisory panel, which will be set up next month, the Nikkei Shimbun said. Matsushita aims to tap Fukui’s knowledge on macroeconomics and global issues, it said.
■MACHINERY
Mitsubishi invests in plant
Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd will boost its production of core nuclear power equipment by investing ¥15 billion (US$138 million) in its key plant, a newspaper reported yesterday. The nation’s largest heavy machinery manufacturer plans to double production capacity at its nuclear power equipment plant in Akashi, western Japan, the Nikkei Shimbun daily said. Construction would begin in January for completion in mid-2011, it added.
■AVIATION
Airbus delays deliveries
Delivery of a second Airbus A380 to Emirates, the airline of the United Arab Emirates, will suffer a further delay of two months, French daily Le Figaro reported yesterday. Emirates put its first giant A380 into service on Aug. 1 with a direct flight from Dubai to New York. The Middle East’s biggest airline hopes by next spring to take delivery of four more jumbos serving London, Sydney and Auckland as well as New York. A further 53 A380s are scheduled to be delivered by June 2013. Delivery, held up by problems laying out the cabin, would not take place before Oct. 20, nearly two months late, Le Figaro said.
■AUTOMOBILES
Tata plant remains shut
Protests against a factory being built in eastern India to make the world’s cheapest car forced a halt to work for a second day yesterday as vehicle giant Tata Motors mulled the plant’s future. “There has been no improvement in the ground situation so far, hence the conditions are still not conducive for resuming work today,” Tata Motors said. “We continue to assess the situation closely” at the plant in Singur in West Bengal state.
■BANKING
US crisis claims 10th bank
Integrity Bank of Alpharetta on Friday became the 10th US bank to fail so far this year, done in by the very business it was built on — real estate lending. Regions Bank of Birmingham, Alabama, is assuming all of the Alpharetta, Georgia, banks’ US$974 million in insured and uninsured deposits in 23,000 accounts, and about US$34.4 million of the bank’s US$1.1 billion in assets. The remainder of Integrity Bank’s total assets are being retained by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC said it estimated that Integrity’s failure will cost its deposit insurance fund US$250 million to US$350 million.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
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