CHINA
Factory prices stay steady
Factory price growth remained steady last month at a close-to-zero reading that signals the continued risk of deflation in the world’s second-largest economy. The producer price index rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier and the consumer price index rose 1.5 percent, compared with estimates of 0.2 percent and 1.5 percent respectively, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said. Producer prices have been slowing for a while, but prices of global commodity futures have rebounded from a slump in January, the Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index showed.
INDONESIA
Swap auctions to lift liquidity
Bank Indonesia plans to conduct regular open market operations of repo and foreign-exchange swap auctions three times a week to boost rupiah liquidity in the banking system, the central bank said in a statement. The publication of a fixed auction schedule for the next six months is expected to increase certainty for lenders in managing their liquidity. The move comes as the central bank seeks to shield the financial industry from the effects of an aggressive tightening cycle last year. The central bank last month conducted two repo auctions and three foreign-exchange swap auctions.
VENEZUELA
Country must pay oil giant
A World Bank arbitration panel on Friday ruled that the country must pay US oil giant ConocoPhillips more than US$8 billion as compensation for a decade-old expropriation dispute, about the same amount as foreign-currency reserves. The bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes had ruled in 2013 that the 2007 expropriation of ConocoPhillips investments in two heavy-crude oil projects breached international law. Collecting the money might be difficult as the economy has shrunk by more than half since 2013.
FINANCE
Futu shares rise after IPO
Futu Holdings Ltd (富途), the online Chinese broker backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), jumped as much as 46 percent after raising US$90 million in its US initial public offering (IPO). The company sold 7.5 million American depositary shares at US$12 each, after marketing them at US$10 to US$12. The shares opened on Friday at US$14.76 and closed up 28 percent to US$15.32 in New York trading, giving the company a market value of US$1.7 billion. Futu’s first-day performance was the fifth-best showing among 21 US IPOs this year, of which only seven ended their first day of trading above their offer price.
NORWAY
Fund to dump oil and gas
The country’s US$1 trillion wealth fund, the biggest of its kind in the world, is to begin dumping shares in oil and gas companies, but stopped short of barring major producers such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp. The move was hailed by environmental advocates as a sign that the global economy is increasingly moving away from fossil fuels toward cleaner energy. The move would focus on companies that trade solely in exploration and production rather than the integrated oil giants, which do everything from searching for fossil fuels to selling them to consumers. Over time, the fund is looking to sell about US$7.5 billion in shares in 134 energy companies.
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