JAMAICA
Canadians to build housing
A Canadian company has signed a four-year agreement with the government to build 10,000 homes. The island’s housing ministry says Commonwealth Corporate Support Services will launch the US$705 million project this year. Officials said the project aims to provide housing for the middle class and that local workers will be trained and hired. The government said in a statement on Friday that it will provide the land for the homes.
INTERNET
Baidu buying Nuomi stake
Baidu Inc (百度), owner of China’s largest search engine, agreed to buy a majority stake in the e-commerce Web site operator Nuomi Holdings Inc (糯米) for about US$160 million. Beijing-based Baidu will buy about 59 percent of the operator of Nuomi.com from Renren Inc (人人), according to a press release. Nuomi had general merchandise sales of about US$120 million in the second quarter, the companies said. Nuomi had 3.8 million active paying users, the companies said.
TELECOMS
Nokia ‘committed’ to India
Finnish telecom giant Nokia Oyj said on Saturday it is in talks with India’s government about how to create a better business climate and remains “committed” to its manufacturing plant in the country. The statement followed an Indian Express newspaper report on Friday that said the mobile maker had told New Delhi the country is now its “least favorable market” in which to operate and it made better sense to export its products from China. “These discussions have been both constructive and productive, and both sides have worked in a true spirit of cooperation,” the company said in an e-mailed statement to reporters.
BANKING
CCB profits rise 13%
China Construction Bank Corp (CCB, 中國建設銀行), the nation’s second-largest lender, said first-half profit rose 13 percent to a record as income from lending and fee-based services gained. Net income climbed to 119.7 billion yuan (US$19.6 billion), or 0.48 yuan a share, from 106.3 billion yuan, or 0.43 yuan, a year earlier, the Beijing-based lender said in a statement to the Shanghai stock exchange yesterday. That exceeded the 117.8 billion yuan median estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
INVESTMENT
Blackstone reshuffles assets
Global investment giant Blackstone is reshuffling its vast real-estate portfolio, shedding US assets to buy new ones in Europe and Asia. The New York-based firm is working on an initial public offering (IPO) of Hilton Worldwide and appears to be seeking a disposal of La Quinta Inns & Suites hotels. It also is planning IPOs for Brixmor Property Group and Extended Stay Hotels, a source close to the situation said last week. Meanwhile, the company is going ahead with several acquisitions, including the purchase of 30,0000 apartments from US industrial conglomerate General Electric for about US$2.7 billion.
ENERGY
Caracas, PA ink deal
Venezuela and the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Saturday signed agreements which include deals to sell oil to the occupied territories at a “fair price,” Caracas said. The accords were inked following a meeting between Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua and his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad al-Malki. The agreement also guarantees “favorable” repayment terms, as well as training of Palestinians on handling and distribution of oil.
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