SOUTH KOREA
‘Bad loan’ bank to be set up
A bank will be established next month to purchase bad loans owed by builders and developers, the Financial Services Commission said. The bank will take over as much as 1 trillion won (US$933 million) of non-performing debt arising from real estate development projects, the commission said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. It will operate under the private debt clearer United Asset Management Corp with lenders in Asia’s fourth-largest economy contributing funds. The government announced policy measures today to aid troubled builders and the property market, including tax incentives for real estate investment trusts that buy unsold housing. Since late last year, 29 of the nation’s 100 largest builders have applied for financial support because of a prolonged slump in construction and real estate, the statement said.
SOFTWARE
Infosys appoints new CEO
Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s second-largest software exporter, promoted S.D. Shibulal to the post of chief executive officer, picking the company veteran to boost earnings amid rising competition for outsourcing deals. The board also named current chief executive S. Gopalakrishnan co-chairman, and former ICICI Bank Ltd head K.V. Kamath as chairman, the Bangalore-based company said in a statement on Saturday. Current chairman and billionaire founder N.R. Narayana Murthy will become chairman emeritus. As chief executive Shibulal, 56, has the task to win more outsourcing deals as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and International Business Machines Corp expand in India. The management changes come after Infosys’s earnings missed estimates for the third time in four quarters and the company forecast its lowest profit margin since at least 2003.
GREECE
Public supports privatization
Most people favor the sale of government stakes in state-controlled companies as a way of reducing debt, and they support ending guarantees of lifetime jobs for civil servants, an opinion poll showed. -Seventy-four percent of the 514 people surveyed by Public Issue for Kathimerini newspaper said government asset sales were imperative, compared with 21 percent who said they weren’t. Prime Minister George Papandreou’s government has announced a 50 billion euro (US$74 billion) target of revenue from asset sales. Of those surveyed, 58 percent said Hellenic Telecom, now controlled by Deutsche Telekom AG, operated better under private control than under the state.
TRADE
ITC finds for Apple
Apple Inc won an International Trade Commission (ITC) ruling that said the maker of iPhones and iPads did not infringe a patent owned by Taiwan’s Elan Microelectronics Corp (義隆) for touch-control screens. ITC Judge Paul Luckern in Washington said Apple was not infringing the Elan patent, according to a posting on Friday on the agency’s Web site. The judge’s findings are subject to review by the six-member commission, which has the power to block imports of products found to violate US patent rights. Elan, a Hsinchu-based designer of integrated circuits, claimed Apple’s iPhone 3G and 3Gs, iPod touch, iPad, Mac computers and Magic Mouse wireless mouse violate its US patent. The invention involves the use of two fingers to perform operations on a computer screen, replacing the traditional computer mouse or trackball.
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