AIRLINES
JAL plane forced back
A Japan Airlines (JAL) Boeing 787 bound for Tokyo was forced to return to Boston on Thursday due to a possible pump problem, the carrier said, as it dismissed concerns of a new crisis for the plane after a fire in London. On Friday last week, a 787 flown by Ethiopian Airlines caught fire at London’s Heathrow Airport. No one was aboard the parked plane at the time of the incident. British authorities have since recommended that distress beacons on board all Boeing Dreamliners be disabled, after identifying the devices as the likely cause of the fire pending further investigation.
COMPUTERS
Dell buyout vote postponed
Dell on Thursday postponed a vote on a US$24.4 billion go-private buyout plan amid opposition by major shareholders, creating new uncertainty for the former No. 1 computer maker. A Dell statement said the shareholder meeting on the plan, which opened briefly in Texas, was delayed until Monday. “Today’s special meeting of stockholders was convened and adjourned to provide additional time to solicit proxies from Dell stockholders,” the statement said. “No vote was taken on the proposed transaction prior to the adjournment.” Dell shares rose 1.86 percent to close on Thursday at US$13.12.
UNITED STATES
Moody’s upgrades US
Ratings firm Moody’s on Thursday raised its outlook on the US to “stable” from “negative,” citing the US federal government’s progress in putting debt on a more sustainable path. Moody’s “today moved the outlook on the Aaa government bond rating of the United States back to stable, replacing the negative outlook that has been in place since August 2011,” the company said in a statement. Moody’s added that the top triple-A rating was still warranted on US sovereign debt. It said the outlook upgrade reflected its view “that the federal government’s debt trajectory is on track to meet the criteria laid out in August 2011 for a return to a stable outlook.”
MUSIC
Vivendi rejects Softbank bid
French media and telecommunications group Vivendi has rejected an US$8.5 billion offer by Japan’s Softbank for Universal Music, the world’s largest music group, the Financial Times reported. Vivendi told Softbank it was not interested because it saw the music company as central to its future strategy, the financial daily reported on its Web site on Thursday, citing sources close to the matter. An US$8.5 billion offer would value Universal Music at US$2 billion to US$3 billion above most analyst estimates, the Financial Times said.
FINANCE
Morgan Stanley sets buyback
Morgan Stanley said on Thursday that it would buy back up to US$500 million of its own shares, news that surprised investors and helped boost the share price by more that 4 percent. It also reported higher earnings and revenue for the second quarter, helped by gains in both its investment bank and wealth management. Additionally, it is fresh off closing its purchase of brokerage firm Smith Barney from Citigroup, a yearslong process that has been central to CEO James Gorman’s plan to reshape Morgan Stanley. The company earned US$898 million in the quarter after excluding the benefit of an accounting gain, more than double the US$337 million it made a year earlier. Revenue totaled US$8.3 billion before the accounting gain, up 26 percent from a year earlier.
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