Macquarie Bank Ltd, the largest investment bank in Australia, will continue exploring any investment or acquisition opportunities in infrastructure in Taiwan, which is expected to see economic expansion in the following years, an executive said yesterday.
The bank will keep evaluating investment opportunities in infrastructure projects like airports, railways and freeways in Taiwan, Macquarie's executive director Warwick Smith said at an investment forum organized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Taipei yesterday.
Smith declined to confirm reports that Macquarie last week discussed the possibility of leasing some of Taiwan's airports and freeways with the Ministry of Finance.
However, he said that infrastructure was an appealing investment target as it offered stable income, cash flow and sustainable competitive edges with high entry barriers.
In December, the Australian bank was said to be interested in acquiring Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, as well as Taipei City's public parking lots. The deals, if they were to materialize, would mark the nation's first sale of national infrastructure to overseas investors.
In recognition of foreign enterprises' investment and contributions to the local economy, the economics ministry yesterday presented a ceremony at which it awarded six companies a total of NT$5 million in prizes.
The six companies that won the "Best Investment Partner Award" are: AIG, Citigroup, Corning Display Technologies Taiwan, DuPont Taiwan, IBM Taiwan and Kuozui Motors.
"I want to thank these six companies for their investments, which have made such a vital contribution toward employment in Taiwan as well as to the development and upgrading of our industries," Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) said.
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