ECONOMY
M1B grows 5.76%
Last month’s M1B — a measure of the money in circulation in the nation — grew 5.76 percent year-on-year, slower than the previous month’s 5.9 percent, the central bank reported on Friday last week. The M2 — which includes the M1B, time deposits, foreign-currency deposits and mutual funds — also saw annual growth decrease to 3.59 percent from 4.1 percent. The declines were mainly because of net foreign-capital outflows and slower growth in bank loans and investments, the central bank said. For the first seven months, the average annual growth rates of M1B and M2 were 5.33 percent and 3.70 percent respectively.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Equipment billings rise
North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment last month reported worldwide billings of US$2.36 billion, international trade group SEMI reported on Thursday last week. The three-month average of worldwide billings for last month was 4.9 percent lower than June’s US$2.48 billion, but up 4.1 percent from US$2.27 billion in the same period last year, the group said. SEMI Taiwan president Terry Tsao (曹世綸) said global billings declined for the second month in a row, but the overall semiconductor equipment industry is expected to end this year with strong growth, driven by demand for memory products, high-performance computing chips and automotive electronics chips.
TRADE
TAITRA inks Finland deal
The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) and its Finnish counterpart on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Taipei to promote bilateral economic and trade cooperation. Businesses exchanges are expected to increase because of the agreement, TAITRA said. The agreement was signed by TAITRA and Business Finland — the major Finnish funding agency for financial research and innovation — at the Fifth Taiwan-Finland Economic and Trade Dialogue.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
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