BANKING
Alibaba activities probed
China’s central bank is to study shadow banking activities at Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) as it tries to ensure a fair environment exists for competition in the industry, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan (周小川) said. Alibaba engages in activities that fall under the Financial Stability Board’s definition of shadow banking and are subject to different capital requirements than traditional banks, Zhou said in a meeting with IMF managing director Christine Lagarde in Washington. “We encourage the development of Internet companies, but under the current situation they need to comply with existing rules when engaging in financial activities,” Zhou said.
MANUFACTURING
Midea, Clivet sign deal
Midea Group Co (美的集團), China’s biggest appliance manufacturer, signed an agreement to buy an 80 percent stake in Clivet SpA, an Italian maker of air conditioners. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of the year, pending anti-monopoly reviews, Midea said in a statement. The Chinese company did not reveal the value of the acquisition. As part of the transaction, Midea is also to acquire Clivet Espana SA, the statement said. The deal came after Media began a tender offer last week to raise its stake in robot maker Kuka AG.
GERMANY
Business prospects bright
German businesses are feeling increasingly optimistic as the outlook brightens for Europe’s biggest economy, a closely watched barometer showed on Friday, in a poll conducted before the British EU referendum. The Ifo institute’s business climate index rose by 0.9 point to 108.7 points this month, the economic think tank Ifo said in a statement. That was highest level since November last year. “The German economy remains buoyant,” Ifo president Clemens Fuest said in a statement. “Satisfaction levels with the current business situation were only slightly higher, but the short-term business outlook improved significantly.”
Acquisitions
Kelcy Warren wins oil deal
Billionaire Kelcy Warren just won a hand in the biggest merger and acquisition poker game he has ever played in the US oil patch. Eighteen months after Warren’s Energy Transfer Equity LP began talks to acquire rival pipeline giant Williams Cos, a Delaware judge on Friday ruled that the company can back out of the nearly US$33 billion deal. The proposed ETE-Williams tie-up, hailed by Warren before the price of oil fell by half, now stands as one of the largest deals undone by the plunge in prices that has sent shock waves through companies, industries and entire economies.
AGRICULTURE
Foodmaker to improve oats
General Mills, a maker of cereal, muesli bars and yogurt, has chosen South Dakota State University as its partner in an effort to improve the quality of oats and make the crop more sustainable. A new research laboratory, unveiled on Thursday, is to focus on the grain that is found in more than a quarter of the foodmakers products, and provide a place for the company’s scientists to collaborate with the Brookings university’s plant breeders, grain, environmental and seed experts, student researchers and others.
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