■INVESTMENT
Nomura eyes Lehman Bros
The president of Japan’s biggest brokerage house, Nomura Holdings, said the company was considering buying a stake in troubled US investment bank Lehman Brothers, a report said yesterday. The move would be part of a plan to spend more than ¥200 billion (US$1.9 billion) on investment in US and European financial institutions, Kenichi Watanabe said in an interview in the Yomiuri Shimbun. Lehman “is one of the candidates in which we plan to invest,” Watanabe said without elaborating.
■LABOR
Strike on at Boeing
Despite a 48-hour contract extension, negotiations between Boeing Co and Machinists union officials have failed and the union declared: “The strike is on!” The Machinists bargain for about 25,000 aircraft assembly workers in the Puget Sound area and about 2,000 more in Wichita, Kansas, and Portland, Oregon. Picket lines went up in Wichita early yesterday and West Coast machinists were due to walk out at 12:01am PDT (7:01 GMT).
■ECONOMY
Indonesia turns to deficit
Indonesia recorded its first current account deficit in almost three years for the second quarter of this year as oil prices increased. Southeast Asia’s biggest economy turned to a US$1.5 billion deficit in its current account in the three months to June, from a US$2.3 billion surplus in the first quarter, the nation’s central bank said in a statement dated Friday. Indonesia’s trade surplus narrowed as growth in non-oil exports slowed, while its oil trade deficit widened.
■MINING
Vale breaks ground in Peru
Brazilian mining company Vale broke ground on Friday on a US$479 million phosphate mine in Peru, becoming the second Brazilian company to announce a major investment there this week. Vale’s Bayovar mine, set to open in 2010 in the northern province of Piura, will produce about 3.9 million tonnes of phosphate a year, Companhia Vale do Rio Doce SA announced in a statement. The mine has 238 million tonnes of phosphate reserves, which are mostly used to produce phosphate fertilizers. The investment will turn Peru into an exporter of phosphorous rock and eventually of phosphate fertilizer, Peruvian President Alan Garcia said at the inauguration ceremony.
■AVIATION
Bank denies Alitalia rumor
The bank overseeing the relaunch of Italy’s ailing national airline Alitalia denied a report on Friday that it had offered a stake of between 10 percent and 20 percent to Air France-KLM, the ANSA news agency said. “There is absolutely no basis” to the report in the French daily La Tribune, the agency quoted a spokesman for the Intesa Sanpaolo bank as saying. La Tribune had said Intesa Sanpaolo offered the stake in secret and “held out the possibility that Air France-KLM could become the majority shareholder in five years’ time, in 2013,” according to an unsourced report.
■LABOR
Unionists paralyze exports
Staff from Ivory Coast’s coffee and cocoa marketing body BCC have launched an unlimited strike over back pay that is paralyzing exports, an official for the BCC said on Friday. “The unionists have ransacked” the hall dealing with export operations, leading to a “paralysis” in the coffee-cocoa trade, senior BCC official Kouassi Konan said. Konan said the strike had no connection with an ongoing corruption probe that has implicated many top BCC executives.
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
NOT TO WORRY: Some people are concerned funds might continue moving out of the country, but the central bank said financial account outflows are not unusual in Taiwan Taiwan’s outbound investments hit a new high last year due to investments made by contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other major manufacturers to boost global expansion, the central bank said on Thursday. The net increase in outbound investments last year reached a record US$21.05 billion, while the net increase in outbound investments by Taiwanese residents reached a record US$31.98 billion, central bank data showed. Chen Fei-wen (陳斐紋), deputy director of the central bank’s Department of Economic Research, said the increase was largely due to TSMC’s efforts to expand production in the US and Japan. Investments by Vanguard International
WARNING SHOT: The US president has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on all imported vehicles, and similar or higher duties on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors US President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested that a trade deal with China was “possible” — a key target in the US leader’s tariffs policy. The US in 2020 had already agreed to “a great trade deal with China” and a new deal was “possible,” Trump said. Trump said he expected Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to visit the US, without giving a timeline for his trip. Trump also said that he was talking to China about TikTok, as the US seeks to broker a sale of the popular app owned by Chinese firm ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動). Trump last week said that he had
STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE: The group is proposing a consortium of investors, with Tesla as the largest backer, and possibly a minority investment by Hon Hai Precision Nissan Motor Co shares jumped after the Financial Times reported that a high-level Japanese group has drawn up plans to seek investment from Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc to aid the struggling automaker. The group believes the electric vehicle (EV) maker is interested in acquiring Nissan’s plants in the US, the newspaper reported, citing people it did not identify. The proposal envisions a consortium of investors, with Tesla as the largest backer, but also includes the possibility of a minority investment by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) to prevent a full takeover by the Apple supplier, the report said. The group is
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