ENERGY
Oil highest since 2014
Oil jumped to the highest in more than six years after a bitter fight between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates plunged OPEC+ into crisis and blocked a supply increase. West Texas Intermediate crude advanced to US$76.98 a barrel, the highest since November 2014, as the breakdown in cartel talks left the market without the extra supplies for next month it had been counting on. Major consumers were paying attention to the cartel’s failure, and the administration of US President Joe Biden urged the group to get its act together. The White House is “closely monitoring the OPEC+ negotiations and their impact on the global economic recovery,” a spokesperson said.
BANKING
Sumitomo to buy stake
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc is to buy a 74.9 percent stake in Fullerton India Credit Co for about US$2 billion, marking the first entry into the South Asian country’s retail financial business by a Japanese bank. Japan’s second-largest lender would eventually acquire the rest of the Indian credit firm from Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte, it said in a statement Tuesday. With the acquisition, Fullerton India would become a consolidated subsidiary of Sumitomo Mitsui, it said in a separate statement. Fullerton Financial is a unit of Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek Holdings Pte.
SINGAPORE
Suspect’s bail increased
A court has tightened bail conditions for a businessman accused of involvement in a bogus, billion-dollar nickel trading scheme after the prosecution said plans were afoot to help him flee the city-state. Ng Yu Zhi (黃有志), a former managing director of trading companies Envy Global Trading Pte Ltd and an inactive firm, Envy Asset Management Pte Ltd, has been implicated by authorities in a fraudulent scheme that raised at least S$1.5 billion (US$1.12 billion) from investors. Ng’s bail was increased to S$4 million from the previous S$1.5 million, court proceedings showed on Monday.
UNITED KINGDOM
Firm to rent out apartments
John Lewis Partnership PLC, whose department stores have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, is to rent out thousands of new homes to be built on its plots. The company announced over the weekend that about 10,000 new apartments and houses would be built mostly on sites housing John Lewis department stores, Waitrose supermarkets and distribution centers, beginning in southeast England. The plan would “provide a stable, long term income for the Partnership,” executive director of strategy and commercial development Nina Bhatia said. The group wants to address a national housing shortage in the country, she said.
GERMANY
Industrial orders plummet
Industrial orders fell sharply in May, hit by weak demand from abroad as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to pummel Europe’s top economy, official data showed yesterday. Orders were down by 3.7 percent, the federal statistics office Destatis said, dashing the hopes of analysts polled by Factset who had penciled in a rise of 0.8 percent from April. International orders in May sank particularly sharply, by 2.3 percent from eurozone countries and 9.3 percent from the rest of the world, data showed. The economy shrank in the first quarter of this year as restrictions were imposed to counter a winter surge in COVID-19 cases.
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
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
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
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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