TECHNOLOGY
Jio adds Intel backing
Jio Platforms Ltd, the technology venture of billionaire Mukesh Ambani, secured 18.95 billion rupees (US$253.5 million) from Intel Capital, adding to a slew of investments since April that have reached more than US$15 billion. The investment arm of computer chip giant Intel Corp agreed to buy a 0.39 percent stake in Jio, giving the business an equity value of US$65 billion, Ambani’s conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd said in a statement yesterday.
VIETNAM
Bank loans rise 3.26%
The nation reported a 3.26 percent increase in bank lending from the end of last year to the end of last month, the central bank said yesterday. The Southeast Asian nation’s economic growth traditionally relies heavily on increased credit, though authorities have been trying to reduce this reliance. “The central bank is willing to raise its caps on credit growth for local commercial banks during the rest of this year to support economic growth,” Governor Le Minh Hung said in a statement.
SINGAPORE
Retail sales plummet 52.1%
Retail sales plunged in May by the most since records began in 1986, signaling the economic hit from COVID-19 lockdown restrictions could be worse than earlier anticipated. Overall sales plummeted 52.1 percent from a year earlier, the Department of Statistics said in a report yesterday, worse than the 47 percent median in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Purchases fell 21.5 percent from the previous month, versus forecasts for an 8 percent decline.
PAYMENTS
EU banks plan one system
Sixteen European banks have teamed up to deliver by 2022 a new unified payment system that would offer consumers on the continent both cards and digital wallets that could offer a serious alternative to giants in the sector, such as Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc. Dubbed the European Payments Initiative, the “solution aims to become a new standard means of payment for European consumers and merchants in all types of transactions,” the consortium said in a statement. The project aims to eventually capture at least 60 percent of electronic payments in Europe.
BANKING
HSBC focusing on China
HSBC Holdings PLC yesterday pledged to boost investments in China to capture more wealth and retail clients even as political tension escalates after Beijing launched a new security legislation to crack down on Hong Kong. The bank, which has come under fire over its support for the legislation, announced that it was starting a new service to provide customers in mainland China with digital wealth and insurance planning services. It would initially cover new customers in Guangzhou and Shanghai, it said in a statement. The bank is also establishing a fintech company to support its business.
AVIATION
Boeing official quits
Boeing Co communications chief Niel Golightly resigned on Thursday following a complaint over an article he wrote more than 30 years ago contending that women should not serve in combat. His resignation comes as a number of US companies examine their corporate culture following weeks of protests in the country over racism and police brutality, following the killing of black American George Floyd by a white police officer. Golightly leaves his post at Boeing after just months on the job.
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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