BANKING
Chinese banks cap lending
Chinese banks scaled back lending last month to 667.4 billion yuan (US$108 billion) from the 792.9 billion yuan posted in April, the People’s Bank of China said on Sunday. Actual lending for last month was far below the 821.3 billion yuan expected in a Dow Jones Newswires poll of 14 economists. “Liquidity conditions were much tighter than expected,” investment bank Goldman Sachs said in a research report yesterday. “If sustained, the tighter monetary and fiscal policy stance is likely to put downward pressure on aggregate demand growth.” Goldman said its forecasts for China’s second-quarter and annual GDP growth — both 7.8 percent — faced “downside risk.”
ELECTRONICS
Sharp stock rises on US deal
Shares in Sharp Corp surged 15.21 percent yesterday as the electronics maker announced steady progress in investment from US firm Qualcomm Inc. The Osaka-based firm jumped ¥61 to finish at ¥462. Sharp on Friday said after the market closed that the second batch of Qualcomm’s investment in it would be completed on June 24. That will make Qualcomm the third-largest shareholder, with 3.53 percent of the stock. Analysts have said boosting ties with Qualcomm, which has strength in central processing units for smartphones, is favorable to Sharp’s corporate performance in the long term.
BANKING
Osborne to start Lloyds sale
British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will launch the early sale to the public of shares in bailed-out lender Lloyds Banking Group on Wednesday next week, the Sunday Times reported without citing sources. UK government-owned shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland, also rescued during the financial crisis, will be sold at a later date, the paper added. Osborne will announce the sale of the state’s 39 percent stake in Lloyds, which could raise up to £17 billion (US$26 billion), during his annual policy speech to London’s business community at Mansion House, the Times reported.
RUSSIA
Bank sustains main rate
The central bank kept its main interest rate unchanged at 8.25 percent for the ninth month running yesterday in the face of inflation that has accelerated to the fastest rate in 21 months. The expected decision came as analysts forecast a rate cut in the second half of the year when inflation is expected to slow and the bank will have to stimulate growth that has dropped to nearly half of initial expectations. The central bank also left the discount rate at which it repurchases government securities from the commercial institution steady at 5.5 percent while lowering some medium and long-term borrowing rates.
MEDIA
US nonprofits face headwinds
Nonprofit news organizations have been making an impact in the US market, but face financial challenges similar to those of their commercial counterparts, a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism showed yesterday. The sutdy found that among the 93 “active nonprofit news sites” launched from 1987 to last year, more than half said marketing and fundraising are big obstacles to their survival. Despite the concerns, nonprofit news site operators express optimism about their future. About 81 percent of those polled said they were “very” or “somewhat confident” they will be financially solvent in five years, and four in 10 predict they will hire new staff in the coming year.
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