■INVESTMENT
S African accused of fraud
An expatriate South African businessman accused of running a massive pyramid scheme that cost wealthy investors up to US$1.2 billion has denied any wrongdoing, reports said yesterday. Barry Tannenbaum, who lives in Sydney, has been accused of fleecing rich South Africans in what has been billed as one of the country’s biggest Ponzi-style investment scandals, local and South African media reported. But Tannenbaum had denied running a scam in which he allegedly offered 200 percent annual returns for people investing in his pharmaceutical import businesses, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Tannenbaum, 43, is a relative of one of the founders of South African pharmaceuticals giant Adcock Ingram.
■INSURANCE
Ping An to buy bank stake
China’s Ping An Insurance Group (平安保險), the nation’s second-largest insurer, said yesterday it planned to buy a stake worth up to 22 billion yuan (US$3 billion) in Shenzhen Development Bank (深圳發展銀行). The Hong Kong-listed group said in a statement on its Web site it had agreed to buy up to 1.1 billion shares in the financial institution from the bank itself and from Newbridge Capital, the Asian arm of private equity firm TPG. The Ping An Group currently holds a 4.7 percent stake in Shenzhen Development Bank, but these deals will enable it to acquire up to 30 percent of the firm.
■BANKING
Lehman haggles over assets
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, nine months after it filed bankruptcy and sold its brokerage to Barclays Plc, is still fighting with the British bank over who owns what, including the investment bank’s own furniture. Lehman, once the fourth-largest investment bank, asked a bankruptcy judge in New York last week to let it pay Barclays US$5.9 million to buy back desks, chairs, tables, cubicles, audio-video equipment and security paraphernalia it currently uses in a building at 1271 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The repurchase is necessary because “Barclays has asserted that certain of the office furniture, fixtures and equipment that is located in the building and used by the debtors was previously sold to Barclays,” Lehman said in a June 4 filing in US Bankruptcy Court in New York.
■TRADING
Glitch disrupts NYSE
A computer glitch that halted trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for more than 200 stocks is being resolved, the exchange said. The disruption hit 242 stocks, including American Express Co, General Electric Co, Merck & Co and Exxon Mobil Corp, but they continued to be traded electronically without disruption. About 3,100 stocks are traded at the NYSE. Technicians installed new equipment and the affected stocks were trading an hour later.
■THAILAND
Steel tariffs may be waived
In a bid to assist 15 Japanese auto manufacturers based in the kingdom, Thailand’s finance minister has proposed waiving import tariffs on steel brought in for vehicle production by Japanese firms, media reports said yesterday. Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said the waiver would fall under the Japan-Thailand Economic Partnership Agreement, a partial free-trade agreement inked recently. “Now any company that imports steel for auto production will get the privilege,” Korn told the Nation newspaper. The minister, however, will need Cabinet approval before the waiver goes into effect.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
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