BANKING
CDHFC appoints Bertamini
China Development Financial Holding Corp (CDFHC, 中華開發金控) on Wednesday appointed Stefano Paolo Bertamini as its new president, the first foreigner to lead a local financial holding company. The appointment of the former chief executive officer of Saudi Arabia-based Al Rajhi Bank would still need approval of the Financial Supervisory Commission, CDFHC said in a regulatory filing. Bertamini worked at Standard Chartered Bank from 2008 to 2014 and with General Electric Co between 1986 and 2008, the company said. Former CDFHC president Alan Wang (王銘陽) resigned in March, with acting president Hsu Daw-yi (許道義) filling his position since then. While foreigners in senior positions in the nation’s financial firms are rare, CDFHC said that it hopes to leverage Bertamini’s experience in retail and global banking to expand its business to overseas markets.
Real Estate
Tianmu luxury homes soar
Luxury home transactions in Taipei’s Tianmu (天母) went up this year, thanks to the area’s proximity to foreign educational facilities and its popularity among wealthy Taiwanese, Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) said last week. The number of luxury home deals increased 50 percent in the first two quarters, with transactions totaling NT$3.15 billion (US$106.65 million), nearly twice the amount for the whole of last year at NT$1.75 billion, Taiwan Realty said. The results showed that Tianmu remains popular among home buyers even though storefronts in the area have difficulty finding tenants due to capital outflows in the past few years, Taiwan Realty research center head Charlene Chang (張旭嵐) said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to