BANKING
Cash laundered, report says
Several British banks allegedly processed nearly US$740 million in a multibillion-dollar Russian money-laundering scam, the Guardian reported on Monday. According to documents obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, at least US$20 billion was moved out of Russia between 2010 and 2014 in a vast criminal operation called “The Global Laundromat.” The scam involved more than 500 people, including oligarchs and Russian criminals with links to the government and spy agency the KGB. British banks, including HSBC Holdings PLC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Barclays PLC reportedly handled more than 1,900 transactions — out of 70,000. A further 373 operations are believed to have gone through US banks, for a total amount of US$63 million, the Guardian said.
INTERNET
888 to pay special dividend
British online gaming company 888 Holdings PLC said it would pay a special dividend of US$0.105 per share for last year after posting a 82 percent surge in full-year pretax profit, driven by strong performance in its sports betting and casino businesses. The group, which operates the 888 casino, poker, sport and bingo brands, said it was recommending a final dividend of US$0.51 per share along with an additional one-off US$0.105 cents per share bringing the total dividend to US$0.194 per share. The company announced an interim dividend of US$0.38 in August last year. Revenue at its casino and sports divisions rose 21 percent and 49 percent respectively, with total group revenue increasing 13 percent to US$520.8 million. Pretax profit rose to US$59.2 million from US$32.5 million the previous year.
COWORKING
Softbank buys WeWork stake
Softbank Group Corp has invested US$300 million in WeWork Cos Inc, a person familiar with the matter said, an influx of cash that values the New York-based coworking giant at more than US$17 billion. The investment from Softbank is the first in what is expected to be a much larger stake, said the person, who asked not to be identified. WeWork, which rents out desks and offices to small businesses, freelancers and other workers, sold the shares at a higher price than in its previous round, when it was valued at about US$16 billion last year. The new investment was disclosed in a securities filing.
INTERNET
Hackers target car tech
Baidu Inc (百度) has revealed that a gang of “hackers-for-hire” tried to steal its driverless car technology, prompting it to bulk up its cybersecurity team. The Beijing-based company’s head of cybersecurity, Ma Jie (馬傑), said it was unclear who was behind the gang. “It’s very difficult to know who employs them to do that, but we know someone tried to hire someone in the underground market to steal from us,” Ma said.
ELECTRONICS
Galaxy S8 to debut ‘Bixby’
Samsung Electronics Co announced on Monday that a voice-powered digital assistant named “Bixby” would debut with its flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone set to be unveiled by the South Korean consumer electronics giant. Bixby enters a crowded field of digital assistants powered by artificial intelligence. Samsung said Bixby would focus on letting people control mobile apps with spoken directives for a set of preinstalled apps. Samsung late last year bought Viv, a start-up with cofounders who were part of the team that built virtual assistant Siri, which Apple bought seven years ago.
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