BANKING
Seoul suspends four banks
South Korea’s financial watchdog yesterday suspended four savings banks because they failed to meet financial-strength standards, after one bank boss was caught trying to flee to China. The four ordered to halt their operations for six months are Solomon, Mirae, Hanju and Korea Savings Bank, the Financial Services Commission said, amid moves to tighten the banking industry. They were told to appoint new managers and improve their finances within 45 days. They will be put on sale if they fail to do so. Depositors would be allowed to get back up to 50 million won (US$44,000) to avoid a run, the commission said. It promised to investigate any irregularities by major shareholders and executives of the banks. They were ordered to stay in South Korea for questioning.
ENERGY
Rosneft, Statoil sign deal
Russia’s state oil champion Rosneft on Saturday struck a US$2.5 billion Arctic exploration deal with Norway’s Statoil, its third major tie-up in a month and a sign of its growing global ambitions. The alliance’s signature was overseen personally by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in advance of his third stint in the Kremlin in which Russia’s stalling oil production will be one of his biggest concerns. The deal will see Norway’s state-held group win one-third ownership in a new joint venture that will explore one of the Russian firm’s many fields in the Barents Sea. The agreement also covers three Rosneft blocs in the Far Eastern Sea of Okhotsk. Rosneft said it should be able to acquire stakes in undisclosed Statoil international projects in return and also explore sections of the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea. Rosneft President Eduard Khudainatov said he expected Statoil to invest US$1 billion in the Arctic bloc while spending the rest on the Sea of Okhotsk.
CELLPHONES
Judge sanctions Samsung
Samsung Electronics Co, sanctioned by a US judge for its failure to produce source code in a patent-infringement case in San Jose, California, will not be able to use some evidence to defend itself against Apple Inc, US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal ruled. Grewal said in his Friday ruling that Samsung “plainly violated” a court order requiring it to turn over code to Apple, and ruled that Samsung will not be able to offer evidence in the case about its efforts to “design around” three patents at issue in the case. In its lawsuit, Apple claims that Samsung’s 4G smartphone and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer infringe its patents. In December, US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose ruled against Apple’s request to block Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung from selling that phone and tablet in the US.
ROMANIA
IMF agrees to relax austerity
The government has sealed an agreement with international lenders to restore public wages to their previous levels, a senior official said, as part of its efforts to ease an unpopular austerity program. The IMF has said the nation has some space to ease austerity, which included a 25 percent cut in public sector salaries in 2010. Some have since been restored. The center-right government collapsed last month when it lost a vote of confidence in parliament, underscoring public dissatisfaction with its austerity program. Parliament is likely to back a new leftist government today. Romania aims for a budget gap below 3 percent of GDP this year.
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