BANKING
Google partners in India
Alphabet Inc’s Google is partnering with four Indian banks to grant consumer loans online, as the fight for a US$1 trillion digital finance market intensifies. It is teaming with HDFC Bank Ltd, ICICI Bank Ltd, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd and Federal Bank Ltd to offer instant, pre-approved loans to customers “right within Google Pay in a matter of seconds,” it said in a statement. Google re-branded its made-in-India Tez app, launched in September last year, as Google Pay — the catch-all label for its payments services. The app’s users can take out a customized loan and get the money deposited directly into their bank account. It now intends to take its innovations and features to other markets.
ENERGY
Aramco given 40-year deal
Saudi Arabia has granted its state-owned oil company Aramco a 40-year concession to exploit the kingdom’s hydrocarbon reserves as part of the firm’s preparation for a potential initial public offering (IPO), a person familiar with the matter said. The pact replaces norms dating in some cases from 1933, when the kingdom first agreed to let companies drill for oil, the person said, asking not to be named discussing internal matters. Saudi Aramco declined to comment. The legal change might mean little initially since the IPO has been put on hold while the company closes a deal to buy a majority stake in a local petrochemical firm worth as much as US$70 billion.
LABOR
Disney deal details released
The proposed contract Walt Disney World’s unionized workers are scheduled to vote on next week would increase the starting minimum wage by at least 46 percent over three years to US$15 an hour, while enabling Disney to use more part-time workers and require new workers to stay in their positions longer before transferring, according to new details released on Monday. The proposed four-year contract would raise wages for existing workers by at least US$4.75 an hour by October 2021. A coalition of six US unions representing Disney World workers is recommending that its members approve the deal, which was reached late last week after about a year of negotiations. The deal covers more than half of the 70,000 workers at Walt Disney World.
VENEZUELA
Banks told to use petros
President Nicolas Maduro on Monday ordered banks to adopt the petro cryptocurrency as a unit of account. Public and private banks must now reflect all financial information in bolivars and petros, according to a resolution of the Sudeban banking regulator. The move is part of Maduro’s desperate attempts to steer out of five years of recession and inflation the IMF predicts will reach 1 million percent this year. The government has already drastically devalued the bolivar currency by issuing banknotes stripped of five zeroes in new “sovereign bolivars.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Carney rumor rejected
The Treasury yesterday denied a newspaper report that the government had asked Bank of England Governor Mark Carney to stay on for an extra year beyond his scheduled departure in June next year. “We don’t recognize their reporting at all,” a Treasury spokeswoman said when asked about a report in the Evening Standard. A diary item in the paper said Carney had been “quietly approached” about staying another year to provide continuity as the nation leaves the EU.
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
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
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
RSS