TECHNOLOGY
Qualcomm to buy Jio stake
A Qualcomm Inc arm is to plow as much as 7.3 billion rupees (US$97.1 million) into billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s technology venture Jio Platforms Ltd, taking total investments led by Facebook Inc and others to about US$15.6 billion since April. Qualcomm Ventures, which has committed the amount for a 0.15 percent stake, would support the introduction of 5G wireless networks in India, Jio’s parent Reliance Industries Ltd said in a July 12 statement. The deal gives Jio an equity value of about US$65 billion. San Diego-based Qualcomm would help Jio deliver on the “digital transformation of India,” Ambani said in the statement.
HONG KONG
Book fair postponed
Organizers of one of the territory’s biggest annual trade fairs postponed the event for the first time in its 31-year history after a record spike in COVID-19 cases. The Hong Kong Book Fair, which last year drew about a million visitors and a record 686 exhibitors, would be rescheduled after discussions with the government, the organizer said in a statement yesterday, without specifying the new dates. Three other events are also to be pushed back, it said. About 80 percent of 200 exhibitors surveyed by the 2020 Book Fair Concern Group were considering pulling out of the event, Radio Television Hong Kong reported on Sunday.
MEDIA
Hedge fund eyes McClatchy
Hedge fund Chatham Asset Management LLC plans to buy newspaper publisher McClatchy Co out of bankruptcy, ending 163 years of family control. The companies did not put a price on the deal in an announcement on Sunday. The agreement still needs the approval of a bankruptcy judge; a hearing is scheduled for Friday next week. McClatchy is one of the largest newspaper companies in the US. It owns 30 papers including the Miami Herald, the Charlotte Observer and the Sacramento Bee. It filed for bankruptcy protection because of a heavy debt load stemming from its US$4.5 billion purchase of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain in 2006. Chatham was McClatchy’s largest shareholder and debt holder.
COSTA RICA
Nation seeks virus relief
President Carlos Alvarado on Sunday said the Central American nation would begin negotiations with the IMF to access a financial aid package to help offset the economic blow from the COVID-19 pandemic. The president did not discuss the size of the package, but local media reports, citing central bank sources, said aid to Costa Rica would be about US$2.25 billion. The standby arrangement would bring in funds to offset diminishing government revenue as this year’s deficit looks set to exceed 9.7 percent of GDP, the Costa Rican Ministry of Finance said.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Beigene to raise US$2.1bn
Chinese biotech company Beigene Ltd (百濟神州) plans to raise US$2.1 billion in a direct offering of 145.8 million shares to fund drug research and market its treatments in the US and China, the NASDAQ-listed company said yesterday. The shares would be priced at US$14.23 each, equivalent to a price of US$185 per American Depository Share — 5.6 percent lower than its closing price on Friday. The offering is expected to close on or around tomorrow, said the company, whose shares are also traded in Hong Kong. Buyers in the share sale include investment firm Baker Bros. Advisors LP and US generics giant Amgen Inc.
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
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
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)