GAMING
Electronic Arts names CEO
Video game giant Electronic Arts on Tuesday named Andrew Wilson as its new chief executive. Wilson, who had been heading the company’s sports unit and online portal for digital games, joined the California group in 2000 and worked in Asia and as head of the FIFA game titles. Executive chairman Larry Probst said the company had conducted a “rigorous search,” both inside and outside the company. Electronic Arts is known for its Sims titles, and the Battlefield and Need for Speed series.
ENERGY
Alaska wants LNG plant
Alaska wants ConocoPhillips to reopen its mothballed Kenai Peninsula liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant to provide an incentive for petroleum companies to explore and invest in Cook Inlet. In a Sept. 5 letter to ConocoPhillips president Trond-Erik Johansen, acting Natural Resources commissioner Joe Balash requested that the company apply for a three-year federal LNG export license for the plant at Nikiski, about 110km southwest of Anchorage. ConocoPhillips in March announced it would not extend its natural gas export license beyond March 31, but said it would consider a new license if the needs of local gas markets were met and sufficient natural gas was on hand to export.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Epanova decision in May
US regulators have accepted an experimental fish oil-based heart drug from AstraZeneca for review and will make a decision on whether to approve it by May next year. Epanova, for treating people with very high levels of fatty triglycerides in their blood, was developed by Omthera Pharmaceuticals, which AstraZeneca acquired earlier this year. AstraZeneca yesterday said that the US Food and Drug Administration had set a date of May 5 to act on the Epanova submission. Cardiovascular medicine is a key area for AstraZeneca, whose top-selling drug is the cholesterol fighter Crestor. The UK-based group is working on a fixed-dose combination of Crestor and Epanova that, if successful, would extend the Crestor franchise beyond 2016, when the drug’s US patent ends.
FINANCE
Trader says he is scapegoat
A former JPMorgan Chase trader said on Tuesday that the government was making him a scapegoat for the “London whale” trades while letting off his boss. Lawyers for Julien Grout, who was indicted by a grand jury on Monday for fraud and false securities filings in the case, said that he acted under orders from his managers in masking the massive derivatives losses that rocked the bank last year. Grout, who worked under senior trader Bruno Iksil in JPMorgan’s London office, “has been unjustly used as a pawn in the government’s attempt to settle its highly politicized case against JPMorgan Chase,” said Edward Little, an attorney for Grout.
INTERNET
3D search-printer developed
Yahoo Japan Corp has developed a voice-activated Internet search that links to a 3D printer, letting users look online for blueprints to deliver solid objects in a few minutes, the company said. The search engine scours the Internet for information that it can use to print palm-sized renderings of items as diverse as hippopotamuses or fighter jets. The devices use slices of information about a 3D object and gradually deposits fine layers of material — such as plastic, carbon or metal — to build a copy. Yahoo Japan has no firm plans on commercializing the technology.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
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