■ECONOMY
Higher US debt limit urged
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Friday formally requested that Congress raise the US$12.1 trillion statutory debt limit, saying that it could be breached as early as mid-October. “It is critically important that Congress act before the limit is reached so that citizens and investors here and around the world can remain confident that the United States will always meet its obligations,” Geithner said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Treasury officials earlier this week said that the debt limit would be hit sometime in the October-December quarter.
■INTERNET
Publicis may buy Razorfish
Microsoft Corp is close to an agreement to sell its Razorfish Internet advertising agency to Publicis Groupe SA, owner of the Saatchi & Saatchi ad firm, said two people familiar with the talks. The deal could be signed as early as today, according to one of the people, who declined to be named because the discussions are private. Microsoft acquired Razorfish, which designs digital adverting campaigns, as part of its US$6 billion purchase of AQuantive Inc in 2007.
■TELECOMS
Nortel CEO may leave soon
Nortel Networks chief executive Mike Zafirovski is to leave the company as the Canadian telecoms stalwart fights for survival, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The news came as a Canadian Parliamentary committee opened hearings into the sale of some of Nortel Networks Corp assets to Ericsson AB. Legislators have expressed concern the country might lose technology it helped develop. The Wall Street Journal reported that Zafirovski, 55, could leave the company within weeks. He joined Nortel in 2005 on his reputation for saving companies like Motorola Inc’s cellphone division.
■ECONOMY
Canada jobs figure static
Canada shed 45,000 jobs last month, leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 8.6 percent, Statistics Canada reported, as the country’s finance minister said a recovery next year remained likely. The drop in employment was higher than expected by analysts, who had eyed loses of around 20,000 jobs. It is a substantial increase on 7,400 jobs lost in June. Since a peak in October last year, employment has fallen 414,000, mostly among young people (-205,000) and men aged 25 to 54 (-201,000), the agency said.
■BANKING
More US banks shut down
Regulators on Friday shut down two banks in Florida and one in Oregon, bringing to 72 the number of federally insured banks to fail this year under the weight of the weak economy and rising loan losses. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp was appointed receiver of the banks: First State Bank, of Sarasota, Florida; Venice, Florida-based Community National Bank of Sarasota County, and Community First Bank, of Prineville, Oregon. There were 25 bank failures in the US last year.
■WIND POWER
GE blocks Mitsubishi
General Electric Co (GE), the biggest maker of wind turbines in the US, won a key decision in its effort to block Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd from importing rival energy equipment to the US. US International Trade Commission Judge Carl Charneski said on Friday GE’s patent rights were violated by Mitsubishi Heavy, Japan’s largest heavy-machinery maker. His findings are subject to review by the six-member commission in Washington.
SPEED OF LIGHT: US lawmakers urged the commerce department to examine the national security threats from China’s development of silicon photonics technology US President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday said it is finalizing rules that would limit US investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology sectors in China that could threaten US national security. The rules, which were proposed in June by the US Department of the Treasury, were directed by an executive order signed by Biden in August last year covering three key sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and certain AI systems. The rules are to take effect on Jan. 2 next year and would be overseen by the Treasury’s newly created Office of Global Transactions. The Treasury said the “narrow
SPECULATION: The central bank cut the loan-to-value ratio for mortgages on second homes by 10 percent and denied grace periods to prevent a real-estate bubble The central bank’s board members in September agreed to tighten lending terms to induce a soft landing in the housing market, although some raised doubts that they would achieve the intended effect, the meeting’s minutes released yesterday showed. The central bank on Sept. 18 introduced harsher loan restrictions for mortgages across Taiwan in the hope of curbing housing speculation and hoarding that could create a bubble and threaten the financial system’s stability. Toward the aim, it cut the loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent for second and subsequent home mortgages and denied grace periods for first mortgages if applicants already owned other residential
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing manufacturing (ATM) service provider, expects to double its leading-edge advanced technology services revenue next year to more than US$1 billion, benefiting from strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, a company executive said on Thursday. That would be the second year that ASE has doubled its advanced chip packaging and testing technology revenue, following an estimate of more than US$500 million for this year. ASE is one of the major beneficiaries from the AI boom as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is outsourcing production of advanced chip
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