FINANCES
SinoPac income falls 22%
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) on Friday reported that net income in the first seven months of the year fell 22.26 percent annually to NT$5.79 billion (US$183.4 million). During the period, earnings by Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行), its largest subsidiary, dropped 27.45 percent to NT$4.53 billion. SinoPac Securities Co (永豐金證券) saw net income during the same period surge 32.84 percent to NT$898 million, as the TAIEX began rallying in June to regain a foothold above the 9,000-point benchmark.
ACCOMMODATION
Airbnb seeks funding
Home-sharing company Airbnb Inc is raising US$850 million, according to a disclosure filed with the US state of Delaware. The equity round values the San Francisco-based company at US$30 billion, people told Bloomberg in June. The filing did not disclose who is making the investment. Airbnb has raised about US$3.2 billion in equity since July last year, according to private stock market company Equidate.
BANKING
JPMorgan denies deal report
JPMorgan Chase on Friday denied that it ever intended to buy troubled Italian rival BMPS, as people close to the reported deal had reported. “This is not accurate and was never under consideration,” a JPMorgan spokesperson told reporters. Sources on Wednesday had indicated that Jamie Dimon, chief executive of the largest US bank by assets, and Daniel Pinto, the London-based head of JPMorgan’s investment and finance department, were behind the plan to bail out the Banca Monte Paschi di Siena unveiled last week.
BIOTECHNOLOGY
AbbVie files arthritis suit
Biotechnology drugmaker AbbVie Inc filed a lawsuit seeking to block Amgen Inc from selling a copy of arthritis medicine Humira, its top seller. Amgen’s proposed copy would infringe at least 10 patents, AbbVie said as it reserved the right to assert as many as 51 other patents. It was seeking a court order to prevent Amgen from selling a copy of the biotech drug. AbbVie is trying to protect a rheumatoid arthritis injection whose sales surged 17 percent in the second quarter to US$4.15 billion.
OIL
Firm sues over US taxes
A Norwegian oil company is suing West Virginia’s Marshall County after it says it was denied a refund of almost US$350,000 after overpaying for property taxes. The Intelligencer reported that Statoil filed a lawsuit in circuit court against Marshall County assessor Chris Kessler and West Virginia State tax commissioner Mark Matkovich. The company said the overpayments were the result of a clerical error. Kessler said that although a clerical error might have been initially responsible for the overpayment, the company’s failure to double-check in a timely manner amounts to negligence.
ENERGY
Duke seeks bids for assets
Duke Energy Corp has invited Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc and French utility Engie SA to submit binding bids for its Latin American power assets, people with knowledge of the matter said. State-owned electricity generator China Three Gorges Corp (中國長江三峽集團) was also chosen to proceed to the next round, the people said.
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