■SHIPPING
Evergreen replaces chief
Evergreen Marine Corp. (長榮海運), Asia’s biggest container shipping line, announced on Friday that chief executive vice president Wang Chung-jinn (王宗進) will replace Jack Yen (顏火燿) as the company’s president tomorrow. Wang will also serve as the company’s spokesman, while Yen will become a vice chairman at the nation’s largest container shipping company.
■AUTOMOBILES
Volkswagen net income falls
Germany’s Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest carmaker by sales, said on Friday its net income for last year fell 80 percent to 960 million euros (US$1.3 billion) from nearly 5 billion euros in 2008. The drop came as revenue fell 8 percent, to 105.2 billion euros from nearly 114 billion euros a year earlier, even though deliveries to customers were up 1.3 percent year-on-year at 6.34 million vehicles from 2008. Volkswagen said its revenue and operating profit for this year are expected to exceed the previous year’s figures.
■FINANCE
Postbank Ireland to close
Postbank Ireland, jointly owned by the Irish post office and French bank BNP Paribas, said on Friday it would stop accepting new customers and wind down by the end of the year. Postbank chairman Thierry Schuman said a number of factors had led to the decision, including “the unprecedented circumstances in which the financial services sector finds itself, the highly competitive savings market within Ireland and the absence of a perspective of profitability in current market circumstances.”
■FINANCE
Fannie Mae asks for cash
Fannie Mae is asking for a federal cash infusion of US$15.3 billion after posting another big loss in the fourth quarter of last year. The mortgage finance company, seized by federal regulators in September 2008, lost US$16.3 billion, or US$2.87 a share in the October-to-December period. That takes into account US$1.2 billion in dividends paid to the Treasury Department. It compares with a loss of US$25.2 billion or US$4.47 a share, in the year-ago period.
■ICELAND
Credit under pressure
The breakdown in talks on how Iceland should compensate Britain and the Netherlands for money lost in the collapse of an Icelandic bank has put pressure on Iceland’s already weak credit status, ratings agency Moody’s said on Friday. Reykjavik’s failure “to resolve the Icesave dispute puts the Icelandic government’s BAA3 rating under downward pressure,” Moody’s said in a statement. “Moody’s believes the failure to reach a new agreement is likely to lead to an extended delay of the IMF program, a weaker economic recovery and potentially, political instability,” it said.
■AGRICULTURE
Coffee producers meet
Delegates representing coffee producers and consumers met in Guatemala on Friday to discuss global warming’s effect on coffee growing, as producers warned climate change has forced them to find new growing grounds. Coffee producers say they are getting hammered by global warming, with higher temperatures forcing growers to move to higher, cooler and more prized ground, putting their cash crop at risk. “In the last 25 years the temperature has risen half a degree in coffee producing countries, five times more than in the 25 years before,” said Nestor Osorio, head of the International Coffee Organization.
AI REVOLUTION: The event is to take place from Wednesday to Friday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center’s halls 1 and 2 and would feature more than 1,100 exhibitors Semicon Taiwan, an annual international semiconductor exhibition, would bring leaders from the world’s top technology firms to Taipei this year, the event organizer said. The CEO Summit is to feature nine global leaders from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), Applied Materials Inc, Google, Samsung Electronics Co, SK Hynix Inc, Microsoft Corp, Interuniversity Microelectronic Centre and Marvell Technology Group Ltd, SEMI said in a news release last week. The top executives would delve into how semiconductors are positioned as the driving force behind global technological innovation amid the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, the organizer said. Among them,
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a