LOGISTICS
Kingtrans damaged in blast
Evergreen Group’s (長榮集團) Chinese logistics subsidiary, Kingtrans International Logistics (Tianjin) Co (天津長華國際物流), has been badly damaged by the deadly explosions in Tianjin this week. Evergreen on Friday said the Tianjin logistics unit is only 500m from the center of the explosions — the Tianjin Binhai New Area — on Wednesday night, therefore the blasts have dealt a big blow to its subsidiary. Sources from Tianjin familiar with the situation said that Kingtrans could lose tens of millions of yuan as the plant and shipping containers it owns have been almost completely destroyed.
LAWSUITS
‘Flash crash’ trader bailed
A British court has granted bail to the financial trader accused of contributing to the 2010 Wall Street “flash crash.” District Judge Quentin Purdy, sitting at Westminster Magistrate’s Court, accepted a renewed bail application from Navinder Singh Sarao with conditions, including a ban on travel outside Greater London and restrictions on the use of the Internet for financial purposes. Sarao must also provide a £50,000 (US$78,225) surety deposit. Sarao, 36, had been in custody awaiting an extradition hearing since he was arrested April 21 in London on charges including fraud and commodities manipulation.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
UBS finded for misstatement
A unit of UBS AG was fined US$750,000 for misstating that tax-exempt interest paid to customers was taxable, according to the US’ Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. As a result of inadequate procedures to address short positions in municipal bonds, UBS told about 4,370 customers that about US$1.2 million in interest the firm paid them was exempt from taxes, the authority said. In fact, UBS did not hold the bonds on behalf of the customers and the interest the firm paid them was taxable as ordinary income. The error resulted in the underpayment of about US$282,000 in federal taxes, the regulator said.
RETAIL
JC Penney losses narrow
JC Penney Co on Friday said that its losses narrowed in the second quarter on better-expected sales, fueled by men’s clothing, fine jewelry and the beauty brand Sephora. “Although there is much work to do ... it’s clear that when we execute well, we can deliver profitable sales and take market share,” JC Penney chief executive officer Marvin Ellison said. The retailer lost US$138 million, or US$0.45 per share, for the quarter that ended Aug. 1. That compares with a loss of US$172 million, or US$0.56 per share, a year earlier.
ENERGY
EU expected to pass GE bid
General Electric Co (GE) is expected to secure approval from EU antitrust regulators for its proposed 12.4 billion euro (US$13.78 billion) deal to buy French peer Alstom’s power business, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The green light from the European Commission is to come 14 years after it rejected General Electric’s attempt at a US$42 billion takeover of Honeywell International, despite clearance by US authorities. The US conglomerate, which offered concessions to head off the commission’s worries about the company’s largest-ever acquisition, improved its package last week.
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