EQUITIES
Tech issues stop trading
India’s largest exchange yesterday resumed trading in its stock and equity derivatives markets after keeping traders on tenterhooks for about three hours with conflicting messages about what time operations would resume. Issues at the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd started early, when traders were unable to execute trades at its venue and prices were not updating, Kejriwal Research and Investment Services founder Arun Kejriwal said. The bourse shut both the cash and derivatives segments at 9:55am and said premarket trading would resume at 10:45am. Technical issues persisted, forcing it to delay the restart to 11am before finally restarting at 12:30pm. A pricing display issue was still being addressed, an exchange spokeswoman said.
ENERGY
ADNOC mulls joint ventures
The United Arab Emirates’ main state oil company yesterday said that it was seeking to create joint ventures with international investors and was considering floating shares in some of its businesses in an effort to raise billions of dollars. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) said the plans would include expanding its drilling operations, creating a new “energy infrastructure venture” and further opening up its refinery and petrochemical operations to outside investors. The company said it was considering an initial public offering for minority stakes in some related services businesses, though it ruled out floating shares in the overall company for now. That is to remain owned by the Abu Dhabi government. Abu Dhabi holds the bulk of the oil wealth in the seven-state Emirates federation. In October last year, it announced plans to combine two major offshore divisions to streamline its operations amid a slump in oil prices.
ENERGY
Shell spends on renewables
Royal Dutch Shell PLC plans to spend as much as US$1 billion a year on its New Energies division as the transition toward renewable power and electric cars accelerates. “In some parts of the world we are beginning to see battery-electric cars starting to gain consumer acceptance,” while wind and solar costs are falling fast, Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said in a speech in Istanbul yesterday. “All of this is good news for the world and must accelerate,” while still offering opportunities for producers of fossil fuels. Shell sees opportunities in hydrogen fuel-cells, liquefied natural gas and next-generation biofuels for air travel, shipping and heavy freight — areas of transport for which batteries are not adequate. The intermittent nature of wind and solar energy means power plants fired by natural gas would have a long-term role, Van Beurden said.
TRADE
German surplus expands
Germany’s trade surplus widened in May, official data showed yesterday, just days after a stormy G20 summit that saw clashes with the US over protectionism. Exports from Europe’s largest economy grew 1.4 percent compared with April adjusting for seasonal effects, reaching 107.9 billion euros, according to federal statistics office Destatis. With exports gaining 1.2 percent to reach 87.6 billion euros, Germany’s trade surplus grew to 20.3 billion euros in May, compared with 19.7 billion euros in April, and were 14.1 percent higher than in May last year. The surplus is a major source of tension between Germany and historically close allies in the US and the EU.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
AT HIGH CAPACITY: Three-month order visibility on stable customer demand would push factory utilization to between 80 and 85 percent, Vanguard’s president said Foundry service provider Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) yesterday said it is unable to fully satisfy surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) servers and data centers, amid an AI infrastructure investment boom that is crowding out production of less advanced chips. Vanguard is facing an “undersupply of chips” made using mature process technologies, due to strong demand for AI products and improving demand from customers in the commercial, industrial and auto sectors, which are digesting excess inventory to a healthier level, company chairman Fang Leuh (方略) told a virtual investors’ conference. However, Vanguard gave a more conservative view on
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