One of Australia’s richest men, billionaire James Packer, faced a fine yesterday of A$500 (US$468) along with TV executive David Gyngell over an ugly street brawl between the corporate heavyweights. New South Wales state police issued two infringement notices over the dramatic tussle at Bondi Beach on Sunday that left Packer, 46, with a black eye.
“Police today issued a 46-year-old man and a 48-year-old man with a Criminal Infringement Notice for offensive behaviour,” police said in a statement. “The penalty notice carries a fine of $500 if it goes uncontested by the recipient.”
Gyngell, the boss of Australia’s Nine Network, admitted earlier this week that he started the fight with the casino mogul, who had been a childhood friend.
A Nine spokesman told Australian Associated Press that Gyngell would pay the fine.
A photographer who had been hoping to see Packer with rumored new love interest, model Miranda Kerr, captured the two men trading punches and wrestling on the ground outside the magnate’s multimillion-dollar Bondi waterfront home.
Images of the tussle, with Gyngell shoeless and unshaven and Packer dressed in sweat pants and T-shirt, were snapped up by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for a reported A$250,000 and splashed across the group’s newspapers.
The tabloid Sydney Daily Telegraph devoted nine pages to the scandal in one edition, as police opened investigations into the brawl, which was eventually broken up by Packer’s driver and two others.
Reports said Packer and Gyngell fell out after the billionaire split with his wife, Erica, six months ago. Gyngell, who was best man at the wedding, reportedly told his friend he had made a mistake, which Packer did not appreciate.
The issue escalated when Packer complained about a Nine Network news van parked near his home, which he thought would attempt to film him. Gyngell said the truck being there was a coincidence, but the fight broke out when he went to check.
The TV executive accepted responsibility for starting the punch-up.
“Clearly had he not turned up at Packer’s premises in an angry mood, then the confrontation would never have occurred,” Nine said in a statement.
The son of late media baron Kerry Packer, James Packer is one of Australia’s wealthiest people with a personal fortune estimated at A$6 billion. The family company used to own the Nine Network, but sold their final stake in 2008.
Since his father’s death in 2005, Packer has moved the business away from its traditional media operations and focused on creating Crown, a worldwide gambling empire.
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