PROPERTY
CTBC delays sale of office
CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) yesterday said it will extend the deadline for selling its headquarters building in Taipei by three months to give prospective buyers more time to evaluate the property’s value. Interested buyers may now tender bids until Feb. 13, from the original deadline on Nov. 5, CTBC said in a stock exchange filing. The bank-focused conglomerate aims to sell 95 percent of its office building in the center of the city’s prime Xinyi District (信義) and move its headquarters to Nangang District (南港) next year. The company reiterated the possibility of calling off the auction if necessary, without having to offer any compensation to bidders.
REGULATIONS
FTC fines firms for mergers
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday fined the United Daily News Group (聯合報公司) and Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) NT$100,000 and NT$1.2 million (US$10,200 and US$40,800) respectively, for not filing applications for merger deals when they hold a dominant role in their sectors. The United Daily News took part in a joint venture with Chunghwa Telecom to acquire Smartfun Digital Co Ltd (智趣王) in 2011, with the media group taking a 35 percent stake and the telecom awpl65 percent. Chunghwa also merged a real-estate company in 2010 and purchased a 51 percent stake in Sochamp Tech Co Ltd (中華碩銓) in 2011.
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