■UNITED STATES
Securities holdings slump
US portfolio holdings of foreign securities slumped more than 40 percent to nearly US$4.3 trillion last year amid the financial crisis, the Treasury Department said on Monday. The holdings were trimmed to US$4.291 trillion by Dec. 31 from US$7.212 trillion a year earlier, a preliminary annual report said. The holdings at the end of last year comprised US$2.7 trillion in foreign equities, US$1.3 trillion in foreign long-term debt securities and US$300 billion in foreign short-term debt securities, the report showed. The report from a year earlier measured the US$7.2 trillion US holdings as consisting of US$5.2 trillion in foreign equities, US$1.6 trillion in foreign long-term debt securities and US$400 billion in foreign short-term debt securities.
■FINANCE
Citigroup sells card assets
Citigroup Inc said on Monday that it sold US$1.3 billion in credit card assets as the bank reorganizes itself in the wake of government bailouts. The New York-based bank said it sold its entire ownership interest in three North American partner credit card portfolios representing about US$1.3 billion in managed assets. Terms of the deals and the acquirer weren’t disclosed. The portfolios were part of Citi Holdings, one of the company’s units that it split off earlier in the year. That unit holds the holds the company’s riskier assets and tougher-to-manage ventures, while Citicorp is focused on traditional banking around the world.
■MEDIA
Vivendi profit slides 2.8%
Vivendi SA said yesterday its net profit slipped 2.8 percent in the first half as the economic slowdown hit earnings at its core music and mobile telecommunications businesses. Paris-based Vivendi, one of the world’s largest media and entertainment companies with holdings ranging from Universal Music Group to the Canal Plus pay TV service, said net profit in the six months ending June 30 was 1.19 billion euros (US$1.7 billion), down from 1.22 billion euros a year earlier. In a statement, Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy said the company was “successfully weathering the current economic slowdown,” which is having “a real but limited impact.”
■INTERNET
Icahn sells Yahoo shares
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has sold 12.7 million shares in Yahoo, cutting his stake in the company a month after it formed an Internet search partnership with software giant Microsoft. Icahn, a member of Yahoo’s board and one of its largest shareholders, sold the shares during the last three trading days on Wall Street, an exchange filing on Monday said. Icahn sold the shares at prices between US$14.74 and US$14.92. Icahn and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang (楊致遠) were involved in a dispute last year when Yang rejected a US$47 billion takeover bid by Microsoft for the company he founded with a Stanford University classmate in 1995.
■OIL
Petrobras to control fields
Brazil unveiled plans on Monday to boost state control of recently discovered offshore oil fields by giving its oil company, Petrobras, sole operating rights and a minimum 30 percent stake in any joint ventures. The leading role for Petrobras is part of an overhaul of rules for the vast, untapped subsalt fields, superseding a concession system that already applies elsewhere in the country. Brazil believes the oil finds could turn it into one of the world’s top 10 oil exporting nations.
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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