MINING
First Quantum seals deal
Canadian copper giant First Quantum Minerals has announced victory in its bid to secure a C$5.1 billion (US$4.99 billion) takeover of compatriot Inmet Mining Corp. The takeover will create a “new global leader in copper” with a portfolio including operations in eight countries on four continents, First Quantum said in a statement on Friday. First Quantum has forecast revenues of US$3.5 billion this year, while a strategic plan for the company has set a target of producing 1.3 million tonnes of copper a year by 2018. If those targets are met, First Quantum will become one of the five largest producers of copper in the world.
FINANCE
Jain request ‘parity’ pay cut
Deutsche Bank co-chief executive Anshu Jain requested a pay cut of almost 2 million euro (US$2.6 million) to draw level with last year’s compensation package of fellow top executive Juergen Fitschen, a German newspaper reported. Jain, who until June last year was head of investment banking at Deutsche, asked the supervisory board at the beginning of this year not to be paid parts of his bonus for last year, Welt am Sonntag cited sources close to the board as saying. In an excerpt of the article made available on Saturday, the paper said Jain did so of his own volition and that he made a point of getting equal pay with his co-chief executive officer.
AIRLINES
EgyptAir cuts Japan routes
Egypt’s national airline says it will cease operating flights to Japan until further notice due to major economic losses and lack of support from both governments. In a statement on Saturday, the company said that several of its routes have become an economic burden, especially flights to Tokyo and Osaka. EgyptAir has operated flights to Japan for about 50 years, halting the traffic after the 2011 revolt that toppled former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, but resuming the flights five months ago. Earlier this month, Egypt’s civil aviation minister told parliament that the national airline’s losses had reached nearly 6 billion Egyptian pounds (US$900 million), forcing it to reduce its number of flights.
SHIPPING
DP World eyes new markets
DP World Ltd, the world’s third-largest port operator, wants to expand in Latin America and Africa as cost of investment in the US remains high, the Dubai-based company’s chairman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said in an interview on Friday. He declined to specify which countries. DP World, which operates more than 60 terminals in six continents, posted a 21 percent jump in profit last year. Gross container volumes rose 2 percent to 56 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) during the year, while consolidated throughput increased 1 percent to 27 million TEUs. Growth came from the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and part of the Far East, bin Sulayem said.
China
Bank reports slow growth
China Construction Bank Corp (中國建設銀行), the world’s second-largest lender by market value, posted its slowest profit growth in six years as the slowing economy curbed demand for financial services. Net income rose 14 percent to 193.2 billion yuan (US$31.1 billion) last year, or 0.77 yuan a share, from 169.3 billion yuan, or 0.68 yuan, a year earlier, the Beijing-based lender said in a statement to the Shanghai stock exchange yesterday.
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