Macau casino magnate Stanley Ho’s (何鴻燊) share restructuring of his business empire was done without his consent and he accuses his family of stealing shares, leaving him with effectively no assets, his lawyer said yesterday.
The 89-year-old billionaire, chairman of Macau’s biggest casino operator, SJM Holdings (澳門博彩控股), built up a lucrative gambling empire in the former Portuguese colony over nearly half a century.
Ho’s lawyer, Gordon Oldham, said the tycoon had not authorized the transfer of shares in his holding company, Lanceford Co, to his family members.
CARVED UP
Oldham, contacted by mobile phone at the tycoon’s home, quoted Ho as saying his empire was being carved up against his wishes.
“This is robbery,” Oldham quoted Ho as saying.
Joseph Lo (盧志倫), a director at public relations firm Brunswick in Hong Kong, who represents Lanceford, said he did not have any immediate response from Ho’s family.
Since the once spry octogenarian’s health deteriorated following brain surgery in 2009, intense speculation has swirled over the risks of a potentially bitter succession battle amongst his four wives and at least 17 known children.
LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
Oldham said Ho warned he would initiate legal proceedings against his family in the next 48 hours unless the matter was resolved.
Ho, who had amassed a -multibillion-dollar empire, was hospitalized in 2009 and underwent two major surgeries, but following a lengthy convalescence has made sparing public outings.
Oldham wouldn’t talk about Ho’s state of health except to say he was “very distressed” by his family’s actions.
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