UNITED STATES
Budget deficit up US$99bn
The White House Budget Office says the budget deficit is going to be larger than expected this year by US$99 billion. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) points to worsening tax revenues to explain why its forecast two months ago is off the mark. The budget deficit is now expected to be US$702 billion this year. Last year’s deficit registered US$585 billion. The White House kept its budget report to a bare-bones minimum and cast blame on “the failed policies of the previous administration.” The OMB report comes after a Congressional Budget Office analysis scuttled White House claims that its May budget, if implemented to the letter, would balance the federal ledger within 10 years.
SANCTIONS
Siemens partner interrogated
Russian news agencies said the head of a company that operates a joint venture to produce gas turbines with Germany’s Siemens AG was questioned by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on suspicion of disclosing state secrets. The reports come days after Siemens filed suit against another Russian company for allegedly sending two turbines to Crimea, in violation of EU sanctions imposed after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine. There was no confirmation from the FSB, of the reports that AO Power Machines CEO Roman Filippov was detained and questioned on Thursday.
AGRICULTURE
Investors buy up Texas land
Texas over the past 10 years has led the US in foreign purchases of its agricultural land, raising concerns about food security. Data obtained by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found that foreign companies and individuals had bought 687,965 hectares of farm, timber and pastureland in Texas over the past decade, far more than in any other state, the Austin American-Statesman reported on Saturday. The foreign-owned land is worth about US$3.3 billion. Most of the Texas land was bought by North American and European entities, according to the data compiled through the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act.
BANKING
HSBC limits workers’ trading
HSBC Holdings PLC has instructed about 6,000 employees of its global markets division to cease buying single-name securities on their personal accounts, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Purchases of single-name stocks, bonds and concentrated exchange-traded funds will be prohibited, Global Head of Markets Thibaut de Roux told staff in an email on Friday, the people said. The changes also apply to employees managing the lender’s own balance sheet, the people said. Employees are to be allowed to maintain existing holdings of securities prohibited by the new rules, while any sales must be pre-approved by compliance personnel, staff were told.
ENTERTAINMENT
Akon buys download service
Senegalese-American rapper Akon announced Saturday he would purchase 50 percent of African music download service Musik Bi, as the platform struggles to gain a foothold after its launch 18 months ago. Africa’s first home-grown platform for legal music downloads launched in Senegal in February last year with a mission to promote African artists, pay them properly and fight internet piracy. Akon, whose real name is Aliaune Badara Thiam, announced in Dakar he would become the majority shareholder in the service, describing Musik Bi as “the platform of the future.”
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