INVESTMENT
JPMorgan settles at US$23m
JPMorgan Chase & Co will pay US$23 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with pension funds that accused the bank of breaching its fiduciary duty by investing their money in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc notes. JPMorgan and the lead plaintiff, the Board of Trustees of the Operating Engineers Pension Trust, filed a proposed settlement agreement on Friday in federal court in Manhattan. The settlement pertains to all plans and entities governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act for which JPMorgan invested cash collateral in two floating rate notes issued by Lehman Brothers and continued to hold those securities until Sept. 15, 2008, when Lehman Brothers sought bankruptcy, according to the filing.
COMPUTERS
Dell judge denies Icahn
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn failed to persuade a Delaware judge to speed up proceedings in a lawsuit against computer maker Dell Inc. Delaware Chancery Court Judge Leo Strine Jr on Friday denied the request by Icahn, who is trying to thwart a buyout by founder Michael Dell, at a hearing in Wilmington. Dell shareholders of record Aug. 13 are scheduled to vote on the US$24.9 billion buyout at a special meeting on Sept. 12 and to choose directors at an annual meeting on Oct. 17. Strine agreed with lawyers for the company who contended Icahn’s affiliates have had ample time to evaluate the fairness of the buyout and could have made a bid.
INDUSTRY
US Steel installs new CEO
United States Steel Corp says one of its top executives will take over as its new CEO in next month as long-time leader John Surma transitions into retirement. The steel company said on Friday that it has elected Mario Longhi as its next chief executive. Longhi already serves as the company’s president and chief operating officer. Surma, 59, will stay on as an executive chairman through the end of the year and then he will retire from the company and board. He has been president of the company since March 2003, CEO since 2004 and chairman since February 2006. Longhi, also 59, joined US Steel as its COO in July last year and was named president of the company in June. He was CEO of Gerdau Ameristeel for five years and worked at Alcoa for 23 years in a variety of positions. US Steel also said David Burritt, 58, will become its next chief financial officer.
RETAIL
H&M expands to Ethiopia
Swedish fashion retailer Hennes and Mauritz (H&M) said on Friday it would expand its network of suppliers to Ethiopia, after concentrating 80 percent of its production in Asian countries. “We are an expansive company and are constantly looking at new potential purchasing markets to guarantee that we have capacity to deliver products to all stores in our expansive markets,” H&M spokeswoman Camilla Emilsson-Falk said. “We do that by increasing the productivity on the existing production markets as well as looking at new markets,” she added. Test orders have been placed with Ethiopian suppliers and new factories will be built this autumn, but it is too early to say how many suppliers will be used and when the factories will be ready for production, according to Emilsson-Falk. The East African country has had a long history in textile, leather and shoe production since its Italian occupation in 1939.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
RSS