■ Banking
Singapore woos Muslims
Singapore is launching a drive to become a center for Islamic financial services as part of attempts to strengthen ties with the Middle East, former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said. Islamic law forbids the charging of interest. Islamic banking conforms to this guideline, and appeals to Muslims who don't want to deal with Western-style institutions. Singapore already has a major banking and fund management industry, backed by assiduous government support. The city-state promotes itself as a regional financial center. "I want to turn Singapore into a center for Islamic financial services too," Goh, who is now the central bank governor, said in a speech late Friday. Singapore's central bank is already reviewing local regulations to see if there are any "impediments" to the spread of Islamic-style financial services.
■ Stock Market
Yahoo sells Google shares
Yahoo Inc said on Friday it sold US$191 million in Google Inc stock in that company's initial public offering, cashing out some of the 2.7 million shares Google gave Yahoo this month to settle two disputes. Yahoo sold 2.3 million of the Class A shares last week at US$82.62 apiece. Google shares began trading on Aug. 19, following its IPO. In exchange for giving Yahoo 2.7 million shares on Aug. 9, Google got a perpetual license to Yahoo's patent on matching online advertisements to Web-search results. Yahoo also agreed to drop another dispute over warrants to purchase shares that Google granted it under a partnership signed in 2000. Google's stock closed at US$106.15 on Friday, down US$1.76, or 1.6 percent, on the NASDAQ Stock Market. Yahoo also converted 1.1 million Class B common shares into a like amount of Class A stock, leaving Yahoo with 1.48 million Class A shares.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by