Cherry trees bloom at Tianyuan Temple in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District yesterday.
The London Metal Exchange (LME) discovered bags of stones instead of the nickel that underpinned a handful of its contracts at a warehouse in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in a revelation that would deliver another blow to confidence in the embattled exchange. The amount of metal represents just 0.14 percent of live nickel inventories on the LME, worth about US$1.3 million at current prices, so the immediate effect on the metals markets is limited. However, the shock announcement has much wider implications. In an industry riddled with scandals, the LME’s contracts are viewed as unquestionably safe. The news that even a few of
Oil on Friday posted its worst weekly loss since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic as banking turmoil poisoned investor sentiment. West Texas Intermediate for April delivery dropped 2.36 percent to US$66.74 per barrel, falling 12.96 percent for the week, the largest drop in almost three years. Brent crude for May delivery fell 2.32 percent to US$72.97, posting a weekly loss of 11.85 percent. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank and troubles at Credit Suisse Group AG drove investors from risk assets, with oil-options covering accelerating the sell-off. “Crude action this week reminded many of how quickly the commodity can be decimated by
US-based mobile chip designer Qualcomm Inc yesterday opened a manufacturing engineering and testing center in Hsinchu, expanding its presence in Taiwan. Qualcomm also expects to accelerate its purchases in Taiwan, which already rose to NT$240 billion (US$7.9 billion) last year, up from NT$90 billion five years earlier, and should hit NT$300 billion next year. The center is to provide services for the supply chain in the semiconductor industry, Roawen Chen (陳若文), senior vice president and chief supply chain and operations officer of Qualcomm, said at the facility’s inauguration ceremony. It is Qualcomm’s largest and most advanced engineering testing center outside of the company’s
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) has replaced more than 13,000 parts in its products that were hit by US trade sanctions, the Chinese tech giant’s founder said, according to a speech transcript from last month posted on Friday by a Chinese university. Ren Zhengfei (任正非) said Huawei had over the past three years replaced the 13,000 components with domestic Chinese substitutes, and had redesigned 4,000 circuit boards for its products, the transcript posted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University said. “As of now, our circuit board [production] has stabilized, because we have a supply of domestically produced components,” Ren said. He did not give details
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