AVIATION
GE nears US$30bn deal
General Electric Co (GE) is nearing a US$30 billion-plus deal to combine its aircraft-leasing business with Ireland’s AerCap Holdings NV, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. Details of how the deal would be structured were not immediately known, but an announcement was expected yesterday, assuming the talks do not fall apart, the Journal said. The unit, known as GE Capital Aviation Services, is one of the world’s biggest jet-leasing companies and leases passenger aircraft made by companies including Boeing Co and Airbus SE. It owns, services or has on order about 1,650 aircraft, according to its Web site.
BANKING
DBS docks CEO’s pay
DBS Holdings Group Ltd cut chief executive officer Piyush Gupta’s total compensation for last year by 24 percent after Southeast Asia’s largest lender posted its first annual drop in profit for four years. The bank slashed Gupta’s bonus by 27 percent, resulting in a 24 percent decline in his overall compensation to S$9.2 million (US$6.8 million) for the performance year, down from S$12.1 million a year earlier, DBS said in its annual report yesterday. The reduction reflects the “extremely challenging operating environment,” it said. Excluding his pay, the median decline in total remuneration and variable pay of the bank’s management committee members for 2019 and last year was 12 percent and 17 percent respectively.
BANKING
ECB watching crisis-hit firm
European Central Bank (ECB) supervisors have asked banks for details about outstanding loans to Greensill Capital and its client GFG Alliance, the Financial Times reported, citing four people familiar with the matter. Regulators are asking for the details as they try to determine whether a crisis is contained, the report said. Three more directors of Greensill Capital have resigned as the trade-finance company faces a fight for survival following the flight of its top backers. One person told the newspaper that the move was standard and did not reflect heightened concern. Apollo Global Management’s talks to acquire part of Greensill were at “full speed” over the weekend, and “a lot of technical details still need to be ironed out,” one person told the paper.
BANKING
Central banks lack diversity
Just one of the 31 central bank governors appointed last year was a woman, with Vietnam’s Nguyen Thi Hong joining a global group that now consists of 15 female central bank chiefs, according to the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum’s latest gender balance report. That means not even one in 10 central banks is headed by a woman. “While attention is on new accommodative monetary policy measures and lending operations, central banks should not fall behind on measures to correct the lack of diversity,” the forum said.
CRYPTOCURRENCY
Meitu invests in crypto
China’s Meitu Inc (美圖), taking a page from Tesla Inc, has become the latest corporation to invest in cryptocurrency as digital coin prices head into the stratosphere. Meitu, which makes an app that helps touch up user-profile pictures, on Sunday said it bought 15,000 units of ether for US$22.1 million and 379.1 bitcoins for US$17.9 million on the open market on Friday.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
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