AVIATION
TransAsia opens Osaka post
TransAsia Airways Corp (復興航空) said yesterday that it has opened a representative office in Osaka, Japan, to show its ambition to extend its reach to the Japanese market. The office is part of efforts to boost the carrier’s visibility in Japan after it raised its number of round-trip flights to Osaka in March from one per day to two, TransAsia said. The office is TransAsia’s second foothold in Japan after the carrier set up a branch in Tokyo in March 2012. In addition, TransAsia plans to boost the number of its round-trip flights to Tokyo to from one to two per day starting in July, on the back of rising demand.
FINANCE
China Development eyes HK
China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控) said yesterday that it plans to acquire two Hong Kong wealth management consultancies, TG Holborn Ltd (浩邦香港有限公司) and Alpha Global Asset Management Ltd (匯智資產管理有限公司), to boost its presence and earnings overseas. The investment bank-oriented conglomerate plans to buy TG Holborn for HK$8.77 million (US$1.13 million) and Alpha Global for HK$7.59 million in cash, the filing said. The Hong Kong firms provide corporate financial advisory services, from mergers and acquisitions to company listings and employee pension schemes. China Development Financial Holding Corp announced plans to acquire Cosmos Bank (萬泰銀行) in February.
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
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
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