INVESTMENT
Saudi buys stake in Twitter
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the largest individual investor in Citigroup Inc, and his Kingdom Holding Co, have invested US$300 million to buy a “strategic stake” in microblogging service Twitter Inc. “The investment was the result of several months of negotiations,” Kingdom Holding said in a statement to the Saudi bourse yesterday. Alwaleed’s investments include stakes in General Motors Co, News Corp and Apple Inc. The prince, a nephew of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, was ranked the richest Arab businessman this year by Arabian Business magazine with assets valued at US$21.3 billion.
GAMBLING
Macau casino probe ends
Macau casino operator Sands China Ltd, controlled by billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp, said that Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission had decided to take no action after ending a probe into possible breaches of finance regulations. The company said the securities watchdog notified it on Thursday that the probe was over. The notice was posted on the Hong Kong stock exchange Web site late on Sunday. Sands China said in March that the commission was investigating “alleged breaches” of financial regulations and had asked for “certain documents.”
HONG KONG
Investors back Exchange
Options traders have pushed bullish bets on Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd to the highest level since June speculation that the bourse owner would rally as more Chinese companies sold shares to the public. This month’s fastest-growing bets pay if shares rise 24 percent to HK$155 by September. Investors are betting the stock will rebound from a 29 percent drop this year as looser Chinese monetary policy spurs gains in Hong Kong-listed shares, according to Mizuho Asset Management Co’s Masahiko Ejiri.
MINING
Eldorado to buy Goldfields
Eldorado Gold Corp agreed to buy European Goldfields Ltd for about C$2.5 billion (US$2.4 billion) in shares and cash to add reserves in Europe, in the Canadian company’s biggest acquisition. The offer values European Goldfields at the equivalent of C$13.08 a share, the Vancouver-based company said yesterday in a statement, 10 percent more than the company’s closing price on Dec. 5. The acquisition will add a mine and projects in Greece, Romania and Turkey and help more than double annual output by 2015, Eldorado said. The deal “adds more growth at lower cash costs,” Brad Humphrey, a mining analyst at Raymond James Ltd, said by telephone from Toronto yesterday.
BANKING
Goldman tops M&A deals
Goldman Sachs Group Inc is poised to win the top spot among advisers on both global takeovers and equity offerings for the first time in five years. The global -mergers-and-acquisitions team, led since May by Gene Sykes in Los Angeles and London-based Yoel Zaoui, climbed to No. 1 on deals announced this year after trailing Morgan Stanley in 2009 and last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The bank also dominated equity, equity-linked and rights offerings. Lloyd Blankfein, a former head of fixed-income trading who became chairman and chief executive officer in 2006, has sought to repair the firm’s reputation after the US Securities and Exchange Commission and a US Senate subcommittee accused the company of misleading buyers of mortgage-linked investments.
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