■INDIA
Interest rates raised 0.25%
The central bank has unexpectedly hiked key interest rates a quarter of a percentage point, as the bank tries to cool high inflation amid a faster-than-expected economic rebound. The bank raised the benchmark repo rate — at which the central bank makes short-term loans to commercial banks — to 5 percent and raised the reverse repurchase rate — the rate at which it borrows from commercial banks — to 3.5 percent, with immediate effect. “These measures should anchor inflationary expectations and contain inflation going forward,” the Reserve Bank of India said in a statement after trading hours Friday.
■HOUSING
Container houses reappear
Rocketing house prices in China’s booming south are forcing low-earners to turn to cheap homes made out of shipping containers, state media said on Friday. Clusters of container villages are cropping up around the boomtown of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, where real estate prices can rise as high as 20,000 yuan (US$2,900) per square meter, the People’s Daily said on its Web site. An 18m² container can be rented for an entire year for just more than 2,000 yuan, the report said. The containers, fitted with kitchens, bathrooms and windows, are gaining popularity among migrant laborers, builders and students, it said.
■FRAUD
Tax evasion investigated
German prosecutors said on Friday they were investigating about 1,100 customers and staff of Swiss bank Credit Suisse’s local operations on suspicion of hiding money from German tax authorities. “The Credit Suisse clients have investments in total of around 1.2 billion euros [US$1.6 billion],” said Dirk Negenborn, spokesman for prosecutors in Duesseldorf, Germany. He said the total amount of tax owed was unclear. Sources said the Credit Suisse information should allow German tax authorities to recover up to 400 million euros.
■MOVIES
Icahn ups ante on Lions Gate
Activist shareholder Carl Icahn raised the stakes in his yearlong dispute with Lions Gate Entertainment Corp on Friday, launching an all-out bid to take over the movie studio following disagreements over its spending. The hostile bid comes a week after Lions Gate rejected Icahn’s offer to buy a larger minority stake and rewrote its bylaws to make such a takeover attempt more difficult in future. The new offer for all outstanding shares also raised the specter of Canadian government involvement because Icahn, an American, could own the Vancouver-based company and cause friction with the country’s cultural policies. Icahn owns almost 19 percent of Lions Gate.
■AIRCRAFT
Boeing speeds up production
Boeing Co will speed up production plans for its 777 and 747 models in anticipation of greater demand from commercial airlines. Boeing, the world’s second-largest aircraft maker behind Airbus, said on Friday it saw the airline industry recovering this year, followed by a return to profitability next year. That should lead to demand for new aircraft in 2012 and beyond, the company said. The company also said the speedup was necessary because of a “conservatively managed approach to production.” Boeing said it did not think the new production schedule would have a material impact on earnings this year. It expects to offer an update to its earnings forecast when it releases first-quarter results next month.
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
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
REACTIONS: While most analysts were positive about TSMC’s investment, one said the US expansion could disrupt the company’s supply-demand balance Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) new US$100 billion investment in the US would exert a positive effect on the chipmaker’s revenue in the medium term on the back of booming artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from US chip designers, an International Data Corp (IDC) analyst said yesterday. “This is good for TSMC in terms of business expansion, as its major clients for advanced chips are US chip designers,” IDC senior semiconductor research manager Galen Zeng (曾冠瑋) said by telephone yesterday. “Besides, those US companies all consider supply chain resilience a business imperative,” Zeng said. That meant local supply would
BIG INVESTMENT: Hon Hai is building the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art AI chips, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said The construction of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) massive artificial intelligence (AI) server plant near Guadalajara, Mexico, would be completed in a year despite the threat of new tariffs from US President Donald Trump, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), is investing about US$900 million in what would become the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art GB200 AI chips, Lemus said. The project consists of two phases: the expansion of an existing Hon Hai facility in the municipality of El Salto, and the construction of a
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