BANKING
Credit Suisse on watch list
The UK’s financial regulator has added Credit Suisse Group AG to a watch list over concerns that it has not sufficiently addressed risky culture, as the lender struggles to draw a line under a series of scandals and turbulence. The Financial Conduct Authority told Credit Suisse last month that it was adding the bank’s UK operations and international unit to a list of firms warranting close monitoring after a series of scandals, a person with knowledge of the matter said. The regulator cited concern over its risk controls, governance and culture. Officials have asked the firm’s top management to offer evidence of the steps it would take to make improvements going forward, they said.
GERMANY
Fuel firms face crackdown
Berlin plans to give competition authorities enhanced powers to crack down on fuel companies after emergency tax cuts failed to trigger the intended price reductions for consumers. Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck accused oil producers of failing to pass on the benefits of lower levies to consumers and reaping a profit from the surge in energy prices. “My proposal is that we change our antitrust law and create one with teeth and claws” that promotes genuine competition, Habeck said yesterday in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio. Antitrust law needs to be reformed to make it easier to gather evidence of collusion between market participants, he said.
TURKEY
Trade gap data surprises
The nation’s current-account gap widened less than expected as a surge in tourism income mitigated the impact from a global rally in energy prices. The gap widened to US$2.74 billion in April, growing US$1.22 billion from a year earlier, the central bank said on its Web site yesterday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 11 analysts was for a US$3.2 billion shortfall. Last week, Turkey introduced steps related to tightening consumer demand to protect the lira and tame inflation. The central bank has kept its key policy rate at 14 percent for five months.
HOSPITALITY
Frasers unit might go private
Frasers Property Ltd is proposing to take its listed hospitality arm private at a value of S$1.35 billion (US$971.3 million) after the COVID-19 pandemic hammered the hotel and tourism business. The company — backed by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi — is offering S$0.70 per share for Frasers Hospitality Trust, a Singapore-based real-estate investment trust, a joint statement said yesterday. Frasers Hospitality Trust — whose biggest shareholder is Charoen’s conglomerate TCC Group — has grown its portfolio valuation by 35 percent since its initial public offering in 2014.
BATTERIES
CATL launches share sale
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co (CATL, 新能源科技), the world’s biggest maker of batteries for electric vehicles, has launched an A-share private placement that could raise about 45 billion yuan (US$6.7 billion), terms of the deal seen by Bloomberg News said. The company has set a floor price of 339.67 yuan for the placement, the terms said. It plans to price the share sale tomorrow, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified. The placement includes a greenshoe option that could take the deal size to about US$6.87 billion, International Financing Review reported earlier yesterday, citing unidentified people.
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