SINGAPORE
Formula One IPO approved
The stock exchange has approved a plan by Formula One to raise as much as US$3 billion in an initial public offering (IPO), three people with knowledge of the matter said. The people asked not to be identified because the information is private. Formula One’s IPO would be the nation’s largest since February last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, helping it challenge Hong Kong in attracting listings by brand-name companies. However, the owner of the Formula One racing series would have to overcome a stock selloff that has pushed the MSCI World Index down 9 percent this month amid concerns that Greece could exit the eurozone.
HONG KONG
Graff roadshow starts
High-end London-based jeweler Graff Diamonds yesterday launched a roadshow for its reported US$1 billion IPO in the territory. Graff Diamonds founder and chairman Laurence Graff and chief executive officer Francois Graff met potential investors at a hotel, but did not speak to reporters. In a filing with the stock exchange, the company said it made US$623.5 million in retail sales last year compared with US$454.3 million the year before. The roadshow is scheduled to run until May 31 when the IPO will be priced.
FINANCE
City jobs see pay freeze
Pay was frozen in more than nine out of 10 types of investment banking jobs in the City of London financial district over the past year, according to research published yesterday by financial services recruitment firm Astbury Marsden. The research, which looked at 142 different investment banking functions, showed there was no increase in the average basic salary in 92 percent of jobs in the year to the end of March. Astbury Marsden’s chief operating officer Mark Cameron said that although institutions had not been formally implementing pay freezes, a surplus of quality candidates and concerns over the eurozone crisis had created that effect.
AVIATION
Ryanair posts record profit
Irish no-frills airline Ryanair yesterday posted record annual profit on higher passenger numbers and ticket prices, but warned that recession in Europe would weaken future earnings. Profit after tax was 503 million euros (US$643 million) in the 12 months to March 31, up 25 percent compared on the previous financial year, the company said in a results statement. Ryanair yesterday added that revenues increased by 19 percent to 4.33 billion euros from last year to this year.
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
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
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