HONG KONG
Bank employees arrested
Seven former and current bank employees have been arrested as part of a major operation against a US$810 million international money-laundering syndicate, authorities said yesterday. Police declined to name the banks the detainees worked for. Investigators said they are suspected of helping a key Hong Kong-based member of the syndicate apply for business accounts, including falsifying company documents and coaching applicants for interviews. Police said much of the money could be traced to several countries, including Italy, Germany and Vietnam.
APPAREL
Burberry sales down 9%
British luxury brand Burberry Group PLC yesterday said that underlying sales in the fiscal third quarter fell 9 percent as the COVID-19 pandemic closed shops and fewer tourists visited its European stores. Comparable store sales in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa declined 37 percent in the three months that ended last month, but the firm remained confident about its prospects, buoyed by sales growth of 11 percent at its Asia-Pacific stores. Burberry said that 15 percent of its stores are closed, with more than one-third operating on reduced hours.
MEDIA
Netflix beats estimates
Netflix Inc on Tuesday beat estimates for holiday-quarter paid subscriber additions, as original productions, such as Bridgerton and The Queen’s Gambit, helped attract more viewers sheltering at home due to fresh COVID-19 restrictions. The company said it added 8.51 million paid subscribers during the quarter that ended on Dec. 31 last year, beating analysts’ estimates of 6.1 million, IBES data from Refinitiv showed. Revenue rose to US$6.64 billion, edging past estimates of US$6.63 billion.
MACHINERY
ASML celebrates milestone
ASML Holding NV, a supplier of semiconductor equipment, yesterday provided higher-than-expected forecasts for the first quarter and celebrated the 100th shipment of its newest lithography machine. The Dutch company expects first-quarter revenue of 3.9 billion euros to 4.1 billion euros (US$4.73 billion to US$4.97 billion), with a gross margin of up to 51 percent, it said in a statement. Analysts had expected sales of 3.52 billion euros and a gross margin of 49.3 percent.
E-COMMERCE
EBay mulls S Korea sale
EBay Inc is exploring a potential sale of its online marketplace in South Korea, the latest step in a reorganization that has already hived off several units from the main US e-commerce business. The San Jose, California-based firm said it has “initiated a process to explore, review, and evaluate a range of strategic alternatives for its [South] Korea business. The company is considering options that would maximize value for its shareholders and create future growth opportunities for the business.” EBay has 183 million active buyers and about 11 percent of its annual sales comes from South Korea.
MALAYSIA
Interest rate unchanged
The central bank yesterday kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged, as the country grapples with a surge in COVID-19 infections that could take months to subside. Bank Negara Malaysia maintained the overnight policy rate at a record low of 1.75 percent, as expected by 12 of 23 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The rest had forecast a 25 basis point cut.
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