■INVESTMENT
S African accused of fraud
An expatriate South African businessman accused of running a massive pyramid scheme that cost wealthy investors up to US$1.2 billion has denied any wrongdoing, reports said yesterday. Barry Tannenbaum, who lives in Sydney, has been accused of fleecing rich South Africans in what has been billed as one of the country’s biggest Ponzi-style investment scandals, local and South African media reported. But Tannenbaum had denied running a scam in which he allegedly offered 200 percent annual returns for people investing in his pharmaceutical import businesses, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Tannenbaum, 43, is a relative of one of the founders of South African pharmaceuticals giant Adcock Ingram.
■INSURANCE
Ping An to buy bank stake
China’s Ping An Insurance Group (平安保險), the nation’s second-largest insurer, said yesterday it planned to buy a stake worth up to 22 billion yuan (US$3 billion) in Shenzhen Development Bank (深圳發展銀行). The Hong Kong-listed group said in a statement on its Web site it had agreed to buy up to 1.1 billion shares in the financial institution from the bank itself and from Newbridge Capital, the Asian arm of private equity firm TPG. The Ping An Group currently holds a 4.7 percent stake in Shenzhen Development Bank, but these deals will enable it to acquire up to 30 percent of the firm.
■BANKING
Lehman haggles over assets
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, nine months after it filed bankruptcy and sold its brokerage to Barclays Plc, is still fighting with the British bank over who owns what, including the investment bank’s own furniture. Lehman, once the fourth-largest investment bank, asked a bankruptcy judge in New York last week to let it pay Barclays US$5.9 million to buy back desks, chairs, tables, cubicles, audio-video equipment and security paraphernalia it currently uses in a building at 1271 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The repurchase is necessary because “Barclays has asserted that certain of the office furniture, fixtures and equipment that is located in the building and used by the debtors was previously sold to Barclays,” Lehman said in a June 4 filing in US Bankruptcy Court in New York.
■TRADING
Glitch disrupts NYSE
A computer glitch that halted trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for more than 200 stocks is being resolved, the exchange said. The disruption hit 242 stocks, including American Express Co, General Electric Co, Merck & Co and Exxon Mobil Corp, but they continued to be traded electronically without disruption. About 3,100 stocks are traded at the NYSE. Technicians installed new equipment and the affected stocks were trading an hour later.
■THAILAND
Steel tariffs may be waived
In a bid to assist 15 Japanese auto manufacturers based in the kingdom, Thailand’s finance minister has proposed waiving import tariffs on steel brought in for vehicle production by Japanese firms, media reports said yesterday. Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said the waiver would fall under the Japan-Thailand Economic Partnership Agreement, a partial free-trade agreement inked recently. “Now any company that imports steel for auto production will get the privilege,” Korn told the Nation newspaper. The minister, however, will need Cabinet approval before the waiver goes into effect.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
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