TELECOMS
Japan to sell Nippon stake
The Japanese government plans to sell a 3 percent stake in Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp for about ¥184 billion (US$2.2 billion) to boost state finances, the Nikkei Shimbun said yesterday. NTT, a former state monopoly and Japan’s largest telephone company, retired 7.97 percent of its shares outstanding earlier this month, boosting the government’s stake to 36.6 percent from 33.7 percent. By law, the government must hold at least one-third of NTT’s shares and it plans to sell holdings in excess of that threshold, the newspaper said. NTT plans to buy the shares from the government through an off-floor exchange platform, preventing the stock from being released on to the market, the Nikkei said. No one at the finance ministry in charge of the matter was available for comment. NTT could also not be reached for comment.
TRADE
US, EU weight in on Doha
The US and the EU promised on Saturday to use their considerable economic weight to try to secure a successful conclusion to the Doha round of global trade negotiations next year. US President Barack Obama held two hours of talks with EU President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Lisbon, with both sides emphasizing the importance of their economic relationship. They reaffirmed a commitment made at the G20 summit in Seoul this month to promote balanced growth and avoid competitive currency devaluations that can lead to global imbalances, and underlined the critical importance of bolstering trade.
BRAZIL
Ministry to increase budget
The Planning Ministry has proposed increasing the country’s spending this year by 18.6 billion reais (US$10.8 billion) and cutting its GDP primary surplus target to 3.1 percent as Latin America’s largest economy accelerates growth. The proposal would pare the country’s budget surplus before interest payments by 0.2 percentage point, from 3.3 percent, after excluding state-controlled Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA from the fiscal accounting, according to a report released on Friday. The ministry recommended a 8.6 billion reais increase in “discretionary spending” and a 10 billion reais increase in “execution of extraordinary credits,” after the country had a $31.9 billion reais extraordinary gain from state-owned oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA’s share sale. The ministry increased its domestic growth forecast for this year to 7.5 percent, from 7.2 percent in a report two months ago, while keeping its inflation forecast at 5.1 percent.
ENERGY
Oil firms to reject Ecuador
A pair of international oil firms are set to reject new contracts offered by Ecuador’s government as part of the OPEC member’s bid to increase state revenue from the sector, Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa said on Saturday. Tomorrow is the deadline for executives to sign new deals that would throw out profit-sharing arrangements in favor of flat-fee service contracts. The government says companies that do not sign the new pacts would have to leave the country. The leftist leader did not mention any companies by name, but several firms, such as Brazil’s Petrobras and two companies controlled by China’s top oil and gas company, CNPC (中國石油天然氣), have balked at the terms being offered. Other oil companies involved in the negotiations include Spain’s Repsol-YPF and Italy’s Eni.
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