AVIATION
Boeing signs with Dassault
US aerospace giant Boeing has signed a billion-dollar contract with French industrial software company Dassault Systemes to modernize its production system, Le Figaro newspaper reported yesterday. “Boeing has signed a 30-year contract worth a billion dollars, renewable every 10 years,” Le Figaro said. The partnership is to focus on the use of 3D software “to design future products, to modernize the entire production system and to deploy new services.” The software allows all stages of production, from the design to the management of subcontractors, to be organized across a single interface. “From start to finish, Boeing will drive all levels of subcontracting, from the largest to the smallest and will be able to control exchanges between its divisions and its partners,” Dassault Systemes chief executive officer Bernard Charles was quoted as saying by the paper.
INVESTMENT
LedgerX wins approval
LedgerX LLC, a cryptocurrency trading platform operator, won approval from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission to operate as a federally regulated exchange and clearing house for derivatives contracts settling in digital currencies. The New York-based company plans to offer one to six month bitcoin-to-dollars options contracts in late September to early October, LedgerX chief executive officer Paul Chou said in a telephone interview. Contracts for other digital currencies including for Ethereum’s ether are expected to follow. The commission said in a statement on Monday LedgerX would be authorized to provide clearing services for fully collateralized digital currency swaps. Regulators had granted the company authorization to trade digital currencies earlier this month. The company, which is backed by Alphabet Inc’s venture-capital arm, aims to provide institutional investors the ability to hedge against price swings in digital currencies in the same way they protect against volatility in other assets.
GERMANY
Bumper season expected
Domestic companies are gearing up for a bumper season after the summer lull. The business climate in Europe’s largest economy improved for a sixth month this month, Munich-based Ifo institute said. The index, based on a survey of 7,000 companies from manufacturing, trade and construction, rose to 116.0 from a revised 115.2 last month. That is the highest level since 1991 and compares with a median estimate in a Bloomberg survey for a drop to 114.9. Ebullient sentiment suggests the economy’s very strong performance at the start of the year is set to spill over into the second half. Steadily declining unemployment has been supporting domestic demand and the Bundesbank predicts that “lively” export demand will turn manufacturing into a leading growth driver. Ifo’s measure of economic conditions improved to 125.4 from a revised 124.2, and a gauge of expectations rose to 107.3 from 106.8.
MINING
BHP opens in Ecuador
BHP Billiton Ltd, the world’s biggest miner, has opened an office and is seeking to add staff in Ecuador as it advances a search for copper in a nation that is becoming the sector’s exploration hot-spot. Melbourne-based BHP’s local unit, Cerro Quebrado, is to spend about US$82 million on exploration, having established a base in Quito and advertised for workers. The value of Ecuador’s mining sector could rise to US$7.9 billion by 2021 from US$1.1 billion this year as major players arrive, Fitch Group’s BMI Research said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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