■ Share prices close lower
Share prices closed 0.21 percent lower yesterday as short-term investors took advantage of further overnight gains on Wall Street to lock in profits, dealers said. They said the market continues to be held in check by the political uncertainty caused by President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) tightening of the government's China policy ahead of weekend demonstrations. The weighted index shed 13.72 points at the day's low of 6,504.98, off a high of 6,594.18, on increased turnover of NT$129.77 billion (US$4.01 billion).
■ Banker, daughter indicted
The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office yesterday charged Wang You-tseng (王又曾), chairman of the Chinese Bank (中華商銀) and his daughter Wang Lin-ke (王令可), manager of the bank's Nanking branch, with breach of trust and forgery over a 1990 loan made by the bank. The statement of charge said that in Wang, the former chairman of the Rebar Group (力霸集團), had instructed bank officials to loan NT$100 million (US$3.1 million at yesterday's exchange rate ) to a construction firm which wanted to build an entertainment center in Taichung, even though the company didn't have sufficient collateral. Its only collateral was a piece of land that it had already mortgaged to another bank, and three unendorsed checks totalling NT$70 million. Bank officials later discovered that the three checks had been forged by construction company executives. The company was insolvent and only paid NT$2.7 million in interest on the loan. The prosecutor is asking for a three-year prison sentence for Wang and two years each for the construction company officials.
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