■ Insider Trading
Singapore suspends brokers
A state investment agency managing Singapore's massive foreign reserves has suspended three officers involved in an insider trading case in Japan. The suspensions without pay were in addition to fines totalling S$715,000 (US$436,000) earlier slapped on the three staffers of the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC). The GIC said in a statement issued late Friday that the suspensions would last from three to six months, with effect from Dec. 1. The three have also been relieved of all responsibilities for Japanese financial markets. The suspensions were announced more than one month after the case was made public. The GIC, a highly secretive agency, manages over US$100 billion of the city-state's reserves. The fines imposed on the three GIC officers fell short of criminal action. The case involved shares of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. (SMFG) listed on Japanese stock exchanges.
■ Transport
China, Spain to boost flights
China and Spain will increase from two to 21 the number of direct flights permitted weekly between the two countries under a bilateral agreement, a Spanish transport ministry official said on Friday. The slots will be available for any airline that applies for them, the source said. Earlier bilateral agreements specified Iberia and China Eastern Airlines as official operators. However, Iberia has already said it does not intend to establish new routes to China in the short term because it does not think they would be profitable. The country's second airline, Spanair, has announced that it will operate services to China in code-sharing partnership with the Star airline alliance. But Spain's third carrier, Air Europa, said that it would inaugurate flights to Beijing next spring and eventually to Shanghai. The Spanish charter company Air Plus comet also said it was interested in starting flights under the agreement.
■ Oil
India to invite bids
India will invite bids for exploration of 20 oil and gas exploration blocks early next year, it was reported yesterday. India's Petroleum and Natural Gas minister Mani Shankar Aiyer said these would include on-land, shallow offshore and deep water blocks, state-run Doordarshan television reported. The bid would be open to foreign and domestic firms. He said in recent months British oil exploration major Cairn Energy had made two recent oil discoveries in the northern state of Rajasthan while India's Reliance Industries had discovered gas in two blocks off the northeastern and southeastern coasts.
■ Automakers
Mitsubishi in joint venture
Troubled Japanese auto-maker Mitsubishi Motors Corp said yesterday it will tie up with Merrill Lynch and Co in North American financing operations as part of its business rehabilitation efforts. The two companies are also considering establishing a joint venture tasked with collecting automobile loans and raising funds as early as this year, Mitsubishi Motors said. "In an effort to improve [Mitsubishi Motors'] financial standing by reducing assets and interest bearing debt, the company decided to sell off a portion of the assets of Mitsubishi Motors Credit of America Inc," the firm said in a statement. Mitsubishi Motors will sell about US$2 billion worth of assets, such as lease and loan receivables, to Merrill Lynch out of the total US$4 billion assets held by Mitsubishi Motors Credit of America.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to