■STOCK MARKET
TWSE chief visiting US
Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE, 台灣證交所) president Samuel Hsu (許仁壽) is scheduled to leave for the US today on a mission to persuade high-tech businesses in the Silicon Valley to list in Taiwan, the company said. Hsu will hold a seminar on the subject in San Francisco on Tuesday and visit some businesses that had signaled their intention to list in Taiwan, a TWSE statement said. The trip follows a series of similar overseas promotional events that have been held by TWSE in China, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand.
High-tech stocks make up more than half of the publicly traded companies on the TWSE, the stock exchange said.
■INVESTMENT
PRC bank calls for easing
China should relax industry and administrative restrictions to encourage private investment and lower high savings ratio, People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan (周小川) said. The limited choices for investment, especially in the service sector, have led companies to retain earnings or pour money into available industries, such as manufacturing, leading to overcapacity, the central bank chief said at a seminar in Beijing late on Friday. Postal, telecommunications, financial services and education are areas that now limit foreign and private investment, he said.
■GAMING
Las Vegas Sands plans IPO
Las Vegas Sands Corp plans to file with Hong Kong regulators as soon as next month for an initial public offering of shares in its Macau casinos, a person with knowledge of the plans said. The Las Vegas-based casino operator, controlled by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is also seeking amendments to its Macau bank loan, including covenant relief and permission to issue as much as US$1.5 billion in new debt, said the person, who declined to be identified because the plans aren’t public. Las Vegas Sands is seeking funds to restart work on its US$12 billion, 20,000-room complex of hotels and casinos on Macau’s Cotai Strip.
■AUTO PARTS
Goodyear to cut jobs
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co said on Friday it would cut 500 jobs by closing its tire plant in the Philippines as part of a strategy to reduce manufacturing capacity that the biggest US tiremaker believes is no longer competitive. Goodyear opened the Las Pinas plant in 1956. The closure is to be completed by Sept. 30 and will affect most of the company’s 600 employees in the Philippines. Its sales and marketing operations there remain. Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear wants to transfer some tire production to lower-cost plants in the company’s Asia-Pacific Region, but did not specify where within the region.
■NETWORKING
Cisco to lay off hundreds
Cisco Systems Inc laid off 600 to 700 workers this week, bringing the world’s largest maker of computer networking gear closer to its goal of reducing its work force by about 2,000 positions. The cuts, reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal, were made at Cisco’s San Jose, California, headquarters on Thursday, adding to the 447 California workers Cisco had already laid off since the end of February, according to notices filed with the state. As of the end of April, Cisco employed about 66,560 people. The company said in February that it planned to cut 1,500 to 2,000 jobs “in the near term.”
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is