■CURRENCY
More disputes over yuan
Proposed US legislation aimed at punishing China unless it lets the yuan rise would not be in line with WTO rules, China’s Ministry of Commerce said yesterday. US Senator Charles Schumer said on Wednesday that he and other colleagues would push for a vote in the next two weeks on legislation that would allow the US Department of Commerce to use anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws against China or any other country with a fundamentally misaligned exchange rate. Chinese commerce ministry spokesman Yao Jian (姚堅) told a monthly news conference: “It’s against the facts and lacks support from WTO rules.”
■INVESTMENT
FDI gains in China
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China rose 14.3 percent year-on-year in the first five months of this year, the government said yesterday, in an announcement that could add to mounting concern over inflation. Foreign companies invested US$38.9 billion in the world’s third-largest economy from January through last month, Chinese commerce ministry spokesman Yao Jian told reporters. That marked an acceleration from the 11.3 percent growth logged from January to April and 7.7 percent growth in the first quarter. Last month alone, FDI totaled US$8.1 billion, a jump of 27.5 percent over the same period last year, Yao said.
■LABOR
Honda plants back to normal
Honda Motor’s Chinese car plants are operating normally and expected to stay open this weekend, its China spokesman said yesterday. Production at two of its factories was halted for two days this week due to a shortage of parts from a strike-hit supplier. “Production is normal today and I expect things to run according to schedule on Sunday,” Takayuki Fujii said. The official Xinhua news agency reported yesterday that a strike at another parts supplier, a lock factory, could halt Honda’s car assembly operations. Fujii said discussions with workers at the factory were still ongoing but did not specify how the strike would affect production next week.
■BANKING
Difficulties for foreign banks
A senior Taiwanese executive at China’s First Sino Bank (華一銀行) said on Friday that despite the size of the market, it remains very difficult for foreign banks to do business in China. Steve Hsieh (謝泓源), who has served as CEO and president of the bank since 2006, said at a forum in Taipei that Taiwanese banks should not be overly optimistic about venturing into China. Noting that foreign banks hold a market share of less than 2 percent, Hsieh said that although many Taiwanese financial holding companies think China offers tremendous opportunities, having worked there for four years, he feels that doing business in China is very difficult for foreign banks.
■TELECOMS
Motorola settles claim
Handset makers Motorola Inc and Research In Motion Ltd announced on Friday that they have settled a patent complaint over mobile technology that Motorola brought to the US International Trade Commission earlier this year. The companies said RIM, the BlackBerry maker, will give Motorola an upfront payment plus continuing royalties for the use of its mobile technology. They did not disclose specific financial terms. The companies said the deal includes an agreement to cross license patents related to industry wireless standards and wireless e-mail.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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