■ENERGY
Taipower touts green effort
Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower, 台電) plan to give discounts to those who conserve electricity has borne fruit, the state-owned company said yesterday. Since the incentive measures were introduced in July 2008, the public had conserved 7.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity — 2.593 billion in 2008, 3.756 billion last year and 984 million in the first four months of this year. Under the incentive plan, if residents use less electricity over a two-month period than they did during the same period the previous year, the company charges them a discounted rate. The conservation efforts cut electricity fees by NT$24.94 billion (US$785 million), an average of NT$2,010 for each of Taiwan’s 12.41 million households. Taipower also cut its fuel costs by NT$28.958 billion and carbon dioxide emissions by 4.66 million tonnes during the period.
■MINING
Billiton-Rio merger in doubt
BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto might re-evaluate plans to merge their Western Australian iron ore operations if an agreement is not reached by the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal said yesterday. It reported BHP chief executive Marius Kloppers as saying that said the deal’s completion was hampered by a proposed new Australian tax on mining profits. “I still want to do it,” the Journal quoted Kloppers as saying on Friday. “We have many hurdles to jump through, and the tax brings in uncertainty.” The new 40 percent resource rent tax has angered the mining industry generally and sparked talk among some of reconsidering Australian projects.
■AUTOMOBILES
Daimler might exit NYSE
German car maker Daimler AG wants to pull its shares off the New York Stock Exchange because of low trading volume and to reduce the complexity of its financial reports, the company said on Friday. Daimler, the maker of Mercedes-Benz and Smart automobiles and one-time owner of Chrysler, told the stock exchange of its intentions on Friday, and has applied to delist with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, spokesman Han Tjan said. Normally it takes about 10 business days from the application date for shares to be removed from the exchange, Tjan said.
■AVIATION
EasyJet founder resigns
EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou has resigned from the airline’s board, the British group announced on Friday, amid a row over strategy. He was joined in stepping down from the board by fellow non-executive director Bob Rothenberg. “The stated reason for their resignation is that Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou wishes to gain greater freedom to exercise EasyGroup’s rights as a shareholder in the company to seek a change in the company’s strategy,” EasyJet said in a statement.
■EUROZONE
Spain considers tax hike
Spain’s government, under pressure from markets and its EU partners, said on Friday that it is considering taxes hikes to help slash the public deficit, in addition to other unpopular measures already announced. “We are considering the situation, and we don’t rule out anything,” Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said in reply to a question about the possibility of a tax increase. The remark came after Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Wednesday announced a 15-billion-euro austerity package, including a 5 percent pay cut for civil servants.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
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