ARGENTINA
Exchange controls tightened
The government on Monday tightened controls on its foreign exchange market to halt capital flight that has seen billions of dollars flow out of the country’s economy in recent years. New requirements to verify the source of funds tighten regulation of the exchange of the country’s currency amid an overheating economy and 20 percent inflation. The move is latest measure to stem capital flight that has seen almost US$70 billion leave the country in the past four years — growing to almost US$3 billion a month in the second half of this year.
MANUFACTURING
Olympus forms committee
Olympus Corp, which is in a war of words with its fired president over advisory fees paid in takeovers, formed an independent committee to investigate past acquisitions. Tatsuo Kainaka, a former Supreme Court judge and a Tokyo superintendent prosecutor, will chair the six-person committee, Olympus said in a statement yesterday, which will submit its findings to Olympus. The committee will verify whether there were illegal actions and irresponsible decisions in the company’s acquisitions of Gyrus Group, a UK medical-equipment manufacturer, and three Japanese companies.
SECURITY
G4S axes acquisition plan
British security firm G4S Plc has pulled the plug on its planned £5.2 billion (US$8.4 billion) acquisition of Denmark’s ISS after failing to secure shareholder support. “Shareholders have raised concerns particularly over its scale and perceived complexity against the backdrop of current macro-economic uncertainty,” G4S chairman Alf Duch-Pedersen said in a statement. The company also said its planned £2 billion rights issue to fund the acquisition had been scrapped. G4S, which is the world’s biggest security firm, said it had canceled a shareholders meeting for today to seek approval for both the acquisition and rights issue.
MANUFACTURING
Hitachi net profit drops
Japanese high-tech firm Hitachi yesterday said its net profit fell 67.8 percent in the six months to September, hit by the impact of the March earthquake and a strong yen. Hitachi’s net profit came to ¥50.9 billion (US$652 million) in the April--September first half, which was still slightly higher than a recently upgraded profit forecast of ¥50 billion. Operating profit fell 21.8 percent to ¥170.6 billion. “Although we pushed with cutting materials and other costs, [the profit] came below the year-before level due to the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the strong yen,” the company said in a statement. Sales edged up 1.6 percent to ¥4.57 trillion.
MINING
BHP approves expansion
The world’s biggest miner, BHP Billiton, yesterday approved the expansion and development of its coal assets in Australia’s Bowen Basin as part of a US$4.2 billion venture with Japan’s Mitsubishi Development. The development of the Caval Ridge Mine project and expansion of the Peak Downs Mine, both in Queensland state, could initially add 8 million tonnes a year in export metallurgical coal, BHP said. “The total investment in the initial project is US$4.2 billion, of which BHP Billiton’s share is US$2.1 billion,” the company said in a statement. The initial project’s resource life is expected to be greater than 60 years, with the first coal forecast for 2014.
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
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
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