FERTILIZERS
Sinochem drops Potash bid
Sinochem Group (中國中化) has walked away from attempts to put together a takeover offer for Potash Corp of Saskatchewan Inc, Reuters reported, citing sources with knowledge of the matter that it didn’t identify. Efforts to put together a deal to counter BHP Billiton Ltd’s hostile bid had finished, Reuters cited one of the people as saying. A spokesman for Sinochem, which has never publicly stated its intention to bid for Potash, declined to comment, the report said. Last week, two people with knowledge of the matter said Sinochem, China’s largest fertilizer trader, may struggle to get state financial backing for a takeover.
TECHNOLOGY
AMD posts quarterly loss
US computer chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices reported a quarterly net loss on Thursday, but beat the expectations of Wall Street analysts. AMD reported a third-quarter net loss of US$118 million, compared with a net loss of US$128 million during the same quarter a year ago. Excluding one-time items and its remaining stake in factories it spun off last year, the company earned US$0.15 per share. Analysts on average expected earnings of US$0.06 per share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
AUTOMOBILES
Honda recalls 127,000 cars
Japan’s Honda Motor said yesterday it was recalling nearly 127,000 City and New Fit compact cars in Brazil because of potential problems with accelerator pedals. “City and Fit vehicles manufactured in Brazil [between 2008 and this year] are being recalled in Brazil for faulty accelerator pedals,” a Honda spokesman in Tokyo said, noting there were no exports of the vehicles from Brazil. No-one has been injured because of the problem, although it caused one property-damage accident, he said.
FINANCE
MUFJ to step up PRC loans
Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ (MUFJ) Financial Group plans to step up lending in China to better compete with other international megabanks there, such as HSBC and Standard Chartered, a report said yesterday. MUFJ aims to boost its total outstanding loans in China to ¥1 trillion (US$12 billion) within two years, and grow its network of branches and offices to 20 locations from 12 now, the Nikkei Shimbun reported. With the increased capital, it will be able to lend up to US$160 million to a single business under Chinese regulations, the report said.
CHINA
Foreign investment rises
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China rebounded last month, the government said yesterday, in a possible sign of renewed confidence in the economy. Foreign investment in factories and other non-financial assets rose 6.1 percent over a year earlier to US$8.4 billion, the commerce ministry said. That was up from August’s 1.4 percent growth to US$7.6 billion. Total FDI for the first nine months of the year was US$74.3 billion, it said.
ENERGY
Enel sets prices for IPO
Italy’s Enel yesterday set the price range for the sale of up to 33 percent of shares in its Enel Green Power subsidiary from next week in the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in Europe since 2007. The price range of 1.80 euros to 2.10 euros values the firm at 9 billion to 10.5 billion euros (US$12.7 billion to US$14.8 billion), Enel said in a statement. Enel0 expects to raise about 3 billion euros from the IPO.
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