BANKING
Goldman fires trader
Goldman Sachs Group Inc dismissed currency trader Frank Cahill over alleged behavior during his time at HSBC Holdings PLC, according to a person briefed on the matter. Cahill, who joined Goldman Sachs in London in 2012, was identified internally as one participant in transcripts made public as part of HSBC’s settlement with US and UK regulators, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Cahill is the first trader Goldman Sachs has dismissed related to currency-market investigations, the person said. HSBC agreed to pay US$618 million as part of US$4.3 billion in settlements between six banks and four regulators over probes into the rigging of key foreign-exchange benchmarks.
BANKING
ANZ suspends seven
Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ) suspended seven traders amid an investigation by regulators into whether market participants tried to influence Australia’s bank-bill swap rate, the equivalent of the London interbank offered rate. ANZ’s internal review and the investigation by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission “may not be complete for some time,” the bank said in a statement yesterday. Since mid-2012, the commission has probed possible manipulation of Australia’s benchmark, or BBSW, rates by 14 banks that contributed prices to the rate-setting process.
INVESTMENT
Mitsui enters Hollywood
Mitsui & Co, Japan’s No. 2 general-trading company, is venturing in to Hollywood with a minority stake in a media company incubator. Mitsui, based in Tokyo, is investing in Los Angeles-based FactoryMade Ventures, the firm that helped create the English-language El Rey Network with director Robert Rodriguez, according to a statement yesterday. They are also to forge a strategic alliance to develop TV shows, Web series and movies. Financial terms were not available. The deal with FactoryMade follows another Japanese investment in Hollywood — Softbank Corp’s US$250 million for a minority stake in Godzilla producer Legendary Entertainment. Mitsui’s media investments include Kids Station, a TV network in Japan.
ECONOMY
Indonesia raises rates
Indonesia’s central bank raised interest rates on Tuesday for the first time in a year in anticipation of surging inflation after the new government increased the price of subsidized fuel by more than 30 percent. At a special meeting called after the price increase, Bank Indonesia raised its key rate by 25 basis points to 7.75 percent, the first increase since November last year and its highest level for more than five years. Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced the reduction in government fuel subsidies late on Monday.
ENTERTAINMENT
Gaming to surge in MENA
E-commerce and videogame markets are growing “exponentially” across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), driven by the mobile revolution and new youth-produced content, a study found. The gaming market is expected to nearly triple in size, from US$1.6 billion this year to US$4.4 billion in 2022, the study conducted by consulting firm Strategy& — formerly Booz & Co — and the Abu Dhabi media regulatory body, twofour54. So far, international games have about 90 percent of the regional market.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
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