CANADA
Taxes ‘remain competitive’
Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said Canada’s tax rates remain competitive, even as a key business group recommends that his government follow US cuts. Morneau met on Friday with private-sector economists in Toronto ahead of his Feb. 27 budget. He said they discussed the impact of US tax changes, as well as the talks to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement. He reiterated his commitment to reducing Canada’s debt relative to the size of its GDP, but declined to say whether he would balance the budget.
INTERNET
Trio mull football bids
Amazon.com Inc, YouTube and Twitter Inc are all weighing bids for streaming rights to Thursday Night Football, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The three are bidding as much as hundreds of millions of US dollars for rights that will run for as long as five years, according to the people. The National Football League is getting help in the talks from 21st Century Fox Inc, which acquired the TV rights to the games through 2022.
INVESTMENT
JPMorgan eyeing ETF firms
JPMorgan Chase & Co is shopping around for an ETF business that would boost its presence in the US$3.5 trillion US exchange-traded products market, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank’s asset-management unit has had talks with the US business of ETF Securities, two of the people said. JPMorgan also spoke with Global X, though that firm entered into a deal this week to be purchased by South Korea’s Mirae Asset Management, the people said.
WEALTH MANAGEMENT
Clients told to move assets
Morgan Stanley on Friday told some of its international wealth-management clients to liquidate their accounts or shift to another financial institution within 30 days, citing a review of its international account policies. It was unclear what prompted Morgan Stanley’s change and how many people are affected, but the move involves only a small percentage of relatively small international accounts, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Morgan Stanley has been moving more wealthy clients into fee-based accounts priced on asset levels rather than activity.
CONGLOMERATES
Honeywell reveals boss’ pay
Honeywell International Inc on Friday disclosed that chief executive officer Darius Adamczyk’s US$16.5 million pay package for last year amounts to about 333 times more than what the company’s median employee earned, making it the first S&P 100 company to disclose the ratio. The firm said Adamczyk’s compensation for last year, which increased 60 percent from a year earlier, included US$1.41 million in salary and a US$5.72 million cash bonus. The median employee was paid US$50,296.
BEVERAGES
Long Blockchain off NASDAQ
The unprofitable beverage maker Long Blockchain Corp got a notice that its shares would be removed from the NASDAQ, according to a filing on Friday. Its market value has dropped back below the exchange’s US$35 million threshold after surging in December last year, when the company announced it was acquiring 1,000 bitcoin-mining machines and changing its name from Long Island Iced Tea Corp. Even if an appeal is granted, the firm will have to maintain its market value at US$35 million or more for at least 10 business days to remain listed after April 9, or face delisting.
ELECTRONICS
ISS moots Qualcomm bid
Broadcom Ltd’s bid for Qualcomm Inc is a good place to start negotiations between the two companies on what would be the biggest deal in the history of technology, according to Institutional Shareholder Services Inc (ISS). The influential proxy adviser, though, stopped short of recommending that Qualcomm shareholders vote for the current offer of US$82 a share, in a report published on Saturday. The ISS report will put more pressure on Qualcomm’s leadership to give into Broadcom’s demands to engage on a deal to create a chipmaking juggernaut. Qualcomm has talked up its prospects as a standalone company, but ISS poured cold water on that notion.
FOOD
Kraft Heinz profit falls short
Kraft Heinz Co’s sales and profit fell short of Wall Street expectations last quarter, adding pressure on the food giant to fuel growth with a large acquisition. Earnings amounted to US$0.90 a share in the fourth quarter of last year, excluding some items, the company said on Friday. That was US$0.05 below analysts’ estimates. Though sales grew for the second straight quarter — reversing a string of declines — they still missed projections. Sales came in at US$6.88 billion last quarter, while analysts had estimated US$6.91 billion on average.
CEMENT
Dangote revives IPO plans
Dangote Cement PLC, owned by Africa’s richest man, has revived plans for a share sale in London that could raise about US$1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The Nigerian company, controlled by Aliko Dangote, has approached investment bankers to discuss a potential UK listing, the people said. Once banks have been appointed, it will probably take at least five months to complete the process, one of the people said. The cement maker is also considering issuing a debut Eurobond, according to two different people familiar with the matter.
MEDIA
Fees, sales boost CBS profit
CBS Corp overcame a slump in TV advertising to report higher sales and profit in the final quarter of last year, relying on surging subscriber fees and sales of programs to others. CBS boosted sales from licensing by 33 percent and subscription fees by 20 percent, according to a statement on Thursday. The company said its two paid streaming services have almost 5 million subscribers. Fourth-quarter earnings at CBS, excluding some items, rose to US$1.15 a share, according to the statement, beating the US$1.11 average of analysts’ estimates. Revenue rose 11 percent to US$3.92 billion, compared with projections of US$3.71 billion.
ENERGY
E.ON workers stage strike
Around 10,000 workers at German energy group E.ON SE have been called out on strike from today, trade union IG BCE said, after a second round of wage talks ended without an agreement. Chemicals and mining workers union IG BCE is demanding a 5.5 percent pay rise for energy employees, including those at E.ON’s units PreussenElektra and Avacon as well as power network operator Tennet. Workers at grid operator Avacon are to stage a strike all day today and staff at nuclear unit PreussenElektra are to follow a week later with strikes and demonstrations at the Grohnde nuclear plant, in Lower Saxony, IG BCE said on Friday.
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
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
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