CHINA
Japanese firm fined
China’s antitrust regulator fined bearing maker NSK Ltd ￥2.9 billion (US$28 million) for violating rules, the first Japanese company to be punished amid an industry-wide probe into pricing practices. NSK said it is cooperating fully with the investigation by China’s National Development and Reform Commission into its transactions and would make a further disclosure if the fine has any impact on its full-year forecasts, the Tokyo-based company said yesterday in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The commission said this month that it had completed an investigation into 12 Japanese companies and will punish violators.
INSURANCE
Fosun eyes Swiss Re unit
Hong Kong-listed Fosun International Ltd (復星國際) is in talks to buy a Swiss Re AG US life insurance arm in a possible US$400 million to US$500 million deal, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. However, a deal to buy the company, Aurora National Life Assurance Co, had not yet been reached and could still fall through, the news agency said, citing sources. Fosun International is the parent company of Fosun Group, backed by Chinese billionaire Guo Guangchang (郭廣昌).
SHIPPING
Maersk upgrades outlook
A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S raised its full-year profit forecast after the company’s container-shipping line, the world’s largest, said earnings are rising because of higher freight volumes and lower costs. Earnings excluding discontinued operations, impairment losses and divestment gains are expected to total US$4.5 billion, compared with a previous forecast of US$4 billion, Copenhagen-based Maersk said yesterday in a statement. Maersk Line said this year’s profits would be significantly above last year’s result of US$1.5 billion.
AVIATION
Skymark soars on rumor
Skymark Airlines shares soared yesterday after a report said Malaysia’s AirAsia was eyeing the struggling Japanese carrier, but both firms dismissed the story, with AirAsia’s chief executive Tony Fernandes saying he had “never seen such rubbish.” The Tokyo-listed stock jumped 27.77 percent to finish at ￥230, its maximum allowable single-day gain, on the report in Japan’s leading Nikkei business daily. The report said AirAsia was in talks with its lenders over a possible bid for Skymark.
ECONOMY
UK pay gap widens: report
The heads of Britain’s largest companies earned 143 times as much as their average employee last year, a study said on Monday, exposing the growing pay gap between bosses and workers. The wage divide has nearly tripled since 1998, when the average chief executive of firms in the FTSE 100 earned 47 times as much as staff, the report found. The largest pay gap was at mining group Randgold Resources, where boss Mark Bristow was paid ￡4.4 million (US$7.36 million) last year — 1,500 as much as his average employee.
INTERNET
Google buys Jetpac startup
Google Inc confirmed on Monday it has bought the startup behind Jetpac, an app that creates travel guides by analyzing pictures from social networks such as Instagram. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jetpac said that its application would be removed from Apple’s online App Store in the days ahead. The company was founded about three years ago and is based in San Francisco.
AI SPLURGE: The four major US tech companies have lost more than US$950 billion in value since releasing earnings and outlooks, while equipment makers were gaining Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that would reach about US$650 billion this year — a flood of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear within them. The spending planned by Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Microsoft Corp, all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-watermark for capital spending
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
COLLABORATION: Taiwan and the US could jointly find solutions to weaknesses in supply chain resilience for critical materials, focusing on mining and initial refinement Taiwan is likely to purchase rare earths from the US in the future, and is also in talks with Australia and Canada to strengthen global rare earth supply chain security, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. Taiwan and the US last month concluded the sixth Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue, during which both sides signed a joint statement endorsing the principles of the Pax Silica Declaration, pledging to deepen cooperation in areas including critical minerals. At the time, Kung said the two sides would establish working groups to advance cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, critical materials and
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