TECHNOLOGY
Apple CEO takes ‘pay cut’
Apple Inc chief executive officer Tim Cook’s compensation package for this year of US$4.17 million is, on paper, a huge cut for the top executive of the most valuable US corporation, after a package last year fattened by more than US$376 million in long-term stock awards. Cook received the largest single pay package awarded to a company chief executive in about a decade when he replaced Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in August last year. The maker of the iPhone and iPad made the compensation disclosures in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Cook, 52, has been with Apple since 1998. Virtually all of Cook’s US$376 million stock bonus last year was in awards that vest in two chunks — one in 2016 and the other in 2021. This structure was intended to keep Jobs’ longtime lieutenant at the helm for many years, as the value of the stock will depend on how well the company is doing in 2016 and 2021.
CHINA
Small firms boost planned
Authorities have approved local government financing vehicles in five cities to sell a combined 15 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion) of bonds in a pilot program to raise funds for small businesses, two people familiar with the matter said. The National Development and Reform Commission has picked the cities of Tianjin, Guangzhou, Wuxi, Zhenjiang and Yancheng for the trial, said the people, who asked not to be identified. The proceeds will be lent to small local businesses through banks and will not be used to build infrastructure, they said. The country has sought to shore-up smaller companies over concern that slowing economic growth may lead to bankruptcies and job losses. Policymakers this year have called on state-owned banks to bolster lending to small and medium-sized business and allowed companies to raise funds from the debt market by selling bonds through private placements as economic growth fell to its weakest level since 2009.
TECHNOLOGY
Autonomy probe opened
The US Justice Department opened an investigation relating to Autonomy Corp after Hewlett-Packard Co accused the software company of misrepresenting its performance before being bought last year. Justice Department representatives informed the company on Nov. 21 of the probe, Hewlett-Packard said yesterday in its annual 10-K regulatory filing. The computer maker booked an US$8.8 billion writedown related to Autonomy last month after finding that some revenue had been recorded prematurely or improperly. Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch, who left Hewlett-Packard in May, struck a US$10.3 billion deal last year with Whitman’s predecessor, Leo Apotheker, to sell the company he co-founded.
RETAIL
US firms prepare for strike
Home Depot Inc and Lowe’s Cos have the most at stake among retailers facing a dockworkers’ strike, with possible port closures cutting off shipments right before the lucrative gardening season. Home Depot, the biggest US home improvement chain, is making plans in case 15,000 workers at ports from Maine to Texas walk out, and Lowe’s said that it is monitoring the talks. About 45 percent of the commerce that flows in an out of the US goes through east coast ports, according to the National Retail Federation. Retailers “would be hit far and wide from apparel to home goods to patio furniture to barbecues,” Jonathan Gold, the NRF’s vice president for supply chain and customs policy, said yesterday in a telephone interview from Washington.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts