BANKING
JPMorgan to pay US$614m
The US’ largest bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, will pay US$614 million and improve mortgage lending practices under a deal announced on Tuesday to settle claims that it approved thousands of unqualified home mortgage loans for government insurance and refinancing since 2002, costing Washginton millions of US dollars when the loans defaulted. US District Judge Paul Oetken in Manhattan approved the deal, which calls for JPMorgan to pay the money within a month and install an improved quality-control program to review loans it underwrites using a federally maintained software application that determines if a loan qualifies for government insurance. The company said it had already reserved the money for the settlement and any financial impact from exposure to future claims was not expected to be significant.
AIRLINES
SpiceJet to order Boeings
SpiceJet Ltd, the Indian budget airline controlled by billionaire Kalanithi Maran, is poised to order 38 Boeing Co 737 Max jets valued at US$3.9 billion, people familiar with the plan said. The deal consists of 30 new orders and swapping an existing purchase of eight 737 NG jets for the upgraded Max model, said the people, who asked not to be identified as discussions are private. The order may be announced as early as next week at the Singapore Air Show, two people said. Buying new planes will help the carrier take on market leader IndiGo and impending competition from AirAsia Bhd and Singapore Airlines Ltd, both of which have sought licenses to start local airlines in India. Economic growth across the Asia-Pacific area in the past decade has spurred a travel boom in the region that Boeing and European rival Airbus Group NV are counting on for sales.
BANKING
AIG bids to stay BofA deal
American International Group Inc (AIG) and other objectors to Bank of America Corp’s (BofA) US$8.5 billion settlement with mortgage bond investors, including BlackRock Inc, asked a judge to delay the entry of a ruling approving the deal. New York State Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla on Tuesday scheduled a Feb. 19 hearing for the objectors’ request to stay entry of a decision last week approving most of the settlement, Kathy Patrick, a lawyer for BlackRock and the other investors who negotiated the settlement, said in an e-mail. The settlement is part of Bank of America chief executive officer Brian Moynihan’s efforts to resolve liabilities tied to faulty mortgages that have cost the company at least US$50 billion since the financial crisis, most inherited from its 2008 purchase of Countrywide Financial Corp.
ELECTRONICS
Panasonic stock rebounds
Panasonic Corp shares rocketed 19 percent yesterday after the struggling Japanese electronics giant said it swung into the black with a US$2.4 billion profit in the nine months to December last year. The Tokyo-listed shares closed at ¥1,262 as investors reacted to the announcement, which came after markets closed on Tuesday. The stock had sunk 7 percent in the previous session, hit by a broad market sell-off. Panasonic — recovering from combined losses topping US$15 billion in the past two fiscal years — said its net profit came in at ¥243 billion (US$2.4 billion) in the first three quarters, reversing a net loss of ¥623.8 billion over the same period a year ago. Sales rose 4.4 percent. The firm credited its healthier balance sheet to cost-cutting, buoyant auto division sales and a fall in the yen.
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