BANKING
Record settlement reached
Bank of America Corp has reached a record settlement of about US$17 billion to resolve an investigation into its role in the sale of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis, officials directly familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. One of the officials, who spoke with reporters on condition of anonymity because the announcement was not due until yesterday at the earliest, said the bank would pay US$9.65 billion in cash and provide consumer relief valued at US$7 billion. The deal is the largest settlement arising from the economic meltdown in which millions of US citizens lost their homes to foreclosure. It follows agreements in the last year with Citigroup for US$7 billion and with JPMorgan Chase & Co for US$13 billion. As in the Bank of America deal, those settlements were a mixture of hard cash and “credits” for various forms of consumer aid that the banks promised to provide in coming years.
CHINA
Regulators in S Korea talks
Chinese antitrust officials have met with South Korean antitrust officials to discuss violations by US chipmaker Qualcomm Inc, sources said, as Beijing reaches out to regulators overseas to complete a case that could result in record fines at home. Qualcomm is one of at least 30 foreign firms to come under scrutiny as China seeks to enforce a 2008 anti-monopoly law — efforts some critics say have unfairly targeted overseas businesses, raising protectionism concerns. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission fined San Diego-based Qualcomm more than US$200 million in 2009 for abusing its dominant market position, but the stakes are bigger in China, where an investigation by China’s National Development and Reform Commission could trigger changes to Qualcomm’s licensing deals and fines of as much as a tenth of the company’s annual revenue.
FINANCE
Berkshire fined US$896,000
US antitrust officials have fined Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway US$896,000 for failing to notify regulators ahead of a large securities acquisition in December last year. Berkshire agreed to pay the civil penalty to resolve the case, the US Justice Department said on Wednesday. The settlement must be approved by a US court. The company ran afoul of US antitrust requirements when it failed to file papers announcing a purchase of securities in building products company USG Corp that ended up taking its overall stake in USG to more than US$950 million. US federal law requires Berkshire to provide advanced notification to regulators of purchases that lift its holding in another entity to more than US$283.6 million, the US Justice Department said.
INTERNET
Facebook awards prize
Facebook Inc on Wednesday awarded a US$50,000 Internet Defense Prize to a pair of German researchers with a seemingly viable approach to detecting vulnerabilities in Internet applications. Johannes Dahse and Thorsten Holz from Ruhr-Universitat Bochum in Germany won the cash award for a paper outlining how to find flaws hackers could exploit, according to the California-based social network. The committee behind the prize saw a “clear path” for using the money to build the research into technology that could be implemented in the real world. “We decided to focus on creating greater opportunities and incentives for researchers to produce work that actually protects people,” Facebook security engineering manager John Flynn said in a post on his blog.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the