BANKING
Deutsche fined millions
The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) fined Deutsche Bank AG 8.66 million euros (US$9.77 million) over its handling of submissions for EURIBOR, a reference rate at the heart of a scandal that rocked the industry. The lender temporarily did not have effective systems and controls for contributions to the benchmark, BaFin said in a statement. While BaFin said Deutsche Bank has a right to appeal, the company said in a statement that it accepts the fine to create “legal certainty.” “It remains a top priority for us to identify and address potential weaknesses in our control processes,” Deutsche Bank said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Consumers face tough year
Households are heading into the “year of the squeeze” as surging energy bills and faster inflation eat into incomes, the Resolution Foundation think tank said. In a grim report days before the New Year holiday, it said real wages would effectively stagnate next year, rising just 0.1 percent. In three years, they would be ￡740 (US$993) a year lower than if the pre-COVID-19 wage trend had continued. Inflation has already breached 5 percent and might hit 6 percent early next year, the highest in three decades. In addition to energy prices, consumers would have to deal with tax increases in April.
AUTOMAKERS
Zeekr to make Waymo EVs
China’s Geely Holding Group Co (吉利控股集團) said its premium electric mobility brand, Zeekr, would make electric vehicles (EVs) for Waymo, Alphabet Inc’s self-driving unit, to be deployed as fully autonomous ride-hailing vehicles across the US. The vehicles would be designed and developed at Zeekr’s facility in Sweden, and later integrated with Waymo’s self-driving technology, Geely said on Tuesday. Waymo said it would introduce the vehicles to US roads “in the years to come.” Waymo is the first and only fully driverless taxi service in the US. It has driven thousands of people since launching the service a year ago in Phoenix, Arizona.
E-COMMERCE
JD.com ups buyback target
JD.com Inc (京東) is boosting its share buyback plan by 50 percent, the latest in a slew of tech firms to repurchase stock after China’s regulatory crackdown over the past year sparked a sell-off. The country’s No. 2 online retailer would set aside US$3 billion for the buyback program, which would be extended until March 2024, it said in a filing yesterday. That is up from the US$2 billion it had targeted under the plan originally adopted in March last year. JD yesterday unveiled a five-year green loan facility of US$2 billion, its first such financing for new and existing green projects.
RIDE-HAILING
Didi plans HK listing
China’s ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc (滴滴) plans to use a mechanism that would allow it to list shares in Hong Kong without raising capital or issuing new stock as it seeks to delist from New York, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The Hong Kong mechanism, known as “listing by introduction,” would allow owners of Didi’s US shares to transfer them to the territory’s bourse gradually, the people said. They declined to be identified as the plan was not yet public. Didi aims to file for the Hong Kong listing by the end of April and list by June, one of the people said.
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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