REAL ESTATE
Parking space sets record
Hong Kong just set another property-price record. This time, it was for a parking space. A 17.5m2 space on Hong Kong island sold for HK$5.18 million (US$664,300) last month, Ming Pao reported yesterday, citing land registration records. The parking space cost more than some homes: Centaline Property Agency Ltd (中原地產) data showed a HK$4.2 million sale of a 26.5m2, two-bedroom home in Sha Tin, in the New Territories, in April. The parking space is at the residential building Upton, which was also the site of the previous record parking-space transaction, the newspaper said.
CHINA
Economy losing momentum
Factory output and retail sales grew at a steady pace last month, but investment slowed, reinforcing views that the world’s second-largest economy would soon start to lose some momentum as lending costs rise and the property market cools. Factory output rose 6.5 percent last month from a year earlier, National Bureau of Statistics data showed yesterday. Retail sales were more upbeat, rising 10.7 percent last month from a year earlier, but fixed-asset investment growth slowed to 8.6 percent in the first five months of the year, data showed. Growth of private investment slowed slightly to 6.8 percent in the first five months from 6.9 percent in the first four months, the bureau said.
MEDIA
Time Inc cutting 300 jobs
Magazine publisher Time Inc said it is cutting 300 jobs as it struggles to adjust to readers’ shift online. The New York company behind its namesake publication, People, Sports Illustrated and Fortune said about half the jobs eliminated are in the US. About 60 percent are layoffs, the rest are staff buyouts. The cuts amount to about 4 percent of the company’s staff as of the end of December last year. Time Inc chief executive Rich Battista on Tuesday said in a note to employees that the company’s key growth areas include video and “native” advertising that looks like editorial content. He says there are “positive signs of stabilizing” in the print business.
MINING
Fosun in Gemfields bid
Fosun International Ltd (復星國際) joined the race for Faberge owner, Gemfields PLC , after it made an initial proposal regarding a possible cash offer for the British precious stones miner. Fosun Gold, part of Fosun International, said it has proposed to buy Gemfields at a price of £0.4085 per share, a premium of 15.1 percent to Gemfield’s closing price of £0.355 on Tuesday. The proposal values Gemfields — which mines for emeralds and amethysts in Zambia, and for ruby and corundum in Mozambique — at £224.6 million (US$287.13 million).
MEDIA
Ten appoints administrators
A major Australian television network, Ten Network Holdings Ltd, has appointed voluntary administrators as it struggles with debt and shrinking advertising revenue. Ten’s board decided to appoint the three administrators yesterday after two of the network’s billionaire backers, Lachlan Murdoch and Bruce Gordon, advised last weekend that they were not prepared to guarantee a new A$250 million (US$189 million) bank loan when a A$200 million loan is due to expire in December. The administrators are to decide whether Australia’s third-most popular commercial television network can continue trading or should be shut down.
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