■ Gaming
Melco files for IPO
Melco PBL Entertainment, the casino joint venture between Australia's Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd and Hong Kong-based Melco International Development Ltd, said yesterday it has filed a registration for its US initial public offering. The joint venture, which focuses on developing casinos and resorts in Macau, has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to float 53 million American Depositary Shares on the NASDAQ, the company said in a statement.
■ Loans
Credit co-ops' ODL down
The average overdue loan ratio of the credit cooperatives run by farmers' and fishermen's associations in Taiwan stood at 8.68 percent at the end of October, down 0.15 percentage points from the previous month's level, according to tallies released yesterday by the Bureau of Agricultural Finance. As of the end of October, the combined assets of the credit cooperatives totaled NT$1.57 trillion (US$48.46 billion), down NT$5.1 billion from the previous month. The net asset value amounted to NT$87.1 billion, up NT$500 million over the previous month. The overdue loans amounted to NT$56.8 billion at the end of October, down NT$800 million from the month-earlier level.
■ Taiwan
Consumer spending picks up
Private consumer spending in the fourth quarter will increase 2.21 percent from a year ago, the highest quarterly growth this year, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) forecast on Friday. The agency also predicted that private consumer spending for the entire year will grow 1.5 percent. The third quarter saw a mere 0.4 percent increase in private consumer spending due to credit card problems, DGBAS officials said. Business revenues generated by wholesalers, retailers and restaurants -- which form the bulk of private consumption -- totaled NT$952.1 billion (US$29.4 billion) in September.
■ Semiconductors
Patent trial postponed
Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc must wait at least five more months to press claims that cellphone chip patents held by Power Integrations Inc are invalid, a federal judge ruled. In October, a jury in Delaware ordered Fairchild to pay Power Integrations US$34 million in damages for infringing patents on semiconductors in mobile-phone power cords. A trial on the patents' validity will begin tomorrow in California-based Power Integrations, with about one-tenth of Fairchild's US$1.43 billion in sales last year, has been fighting chip imports and in August won an International Trade Commission decision barring System General Corp (品佳) of Taiwan from bringing infringing chips into the US.
■ Finance
Watchdog fails consumers
Britain's financial watchdog is failing to protect consumers five years after its inception, according to a consumer body. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has a long way to go before it can claim consumers are property protected, according to the Which group. It said that the FSA "must try harder" in a number of areas -- from disclosing misleading advertising to ensuring financial advisers meet basic standards. The lack of action to name and shame those who fall foul of advertising rules or perform poorly in mystery shopping exercises limited the effectiveness of these tools to improve industry practices, Which said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the