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.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
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