China’s anti-corruption watchdog yesterday said it would expand its inspections to major financial institutions including the central bank and regulatory authorities, which are already under pressure after a spectacular stock market meltdown.
After a series of probes into large state-owned enterprises — in particular oil firms — the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) monitor, now plans to target the financial sector.
The new round of inspections will cover the central People’s Bank of China, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, China Insurance Regulatory Commission and the watchdog China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), according to a long list posted online on Friday night.
China Investment Corp (CIC, 中國投資公司), the world’s largest sovereign fund, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC, 中國工商銀行), Bank of China (中國銀行) and the country’s major insurance companies will also come under scrutiny.
The anti-corruption watchdog will also examine stock exchange operators in Shanghai and Shenzhen, and the parent company of major brokerage Citic Securities Co (中信證券).
After soaring 150 percent in one year, the two bourses went into a tailspin in June that extended into August, tumbling nearly 40 percent despite massive intervention by the authorities at a cost of hundreds of billions of US dollars.
The frantic and clumsy state intervention was criticized, with a number of experts questioning the apparent contradiction with Beijing’s intention to give a greater role to the market and private sector.
The failure of government efforts to stabilize the stock markets reinforced growing doubts about the effectiveness of its economic policy while Chinese growth is experiencing a severe slowdown.
The authorities also reacted to the stock market crash by launching high-profile police investigations into supposedly illegal transactions to reassure public opinion.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”