Arthur Andersen LLP was fired as auditor by Equifax Inc. and Xcel Energy Inc, increasing to 27 the number of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to do so this year.
Equifax, the largest US consumer-credit data company, hired Ernst & Young LLP to replace Andersen, while utility owner Xcel chose Deloitte & Touche LLP. Andersen, indicted on a charge of obstruction of justice for shredding documents related to its audits of Enron Corp, has been dropped by more than 80 US audit clients this year, including FedEx Corp and Sara Lee Corp.
Andersen yesterday said it will sell most non-auditing businesses and adopt former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker's rescue plan in a bid to survive the criminal charge, client defections and Enron shareholder lawsuits.
Outside the US, Andersen's plan to merge its overseas businesses with KPMG LLP is falling apart. Affiliates in Japan, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Russia abandoned the plan and joined other rivals. Andersen's Australian business yesterday agreed to combine with Ernst & Young.
Unless Volcker and Andersen can persuade the Justice Department to drop or settle the criminal charge, Andersen would have to win a trial that starts May 6. If found guilty, Andersen would be prohibited under Securities and Exchange Commission rules from auditing public companies in the US.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
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