GAMING
Sony invests in Discord
The Sony Group has said that it has invested in chat app Discord and is looking to get it into the PlayStation next year. Sony Interactive Entertainment made a “minority investment” in the platform with more than 140 million monthly users, many of them gaming enthusiasts, Sony Interactive Entertainment chief executive officer Jim Ryan said. The news followed reports that Discord had terminated acquisition talks with Xbox producer Microsoft, while other firms expressed interest in partnering with the service.
INVESTMENTS
Berkshire names successor
Berkshire Hathaway Inc plans to name Greg Abel as chief executive when the conglomerate’s longtime chief, Warren Buffett, eventually exits, CNBC reported on Monday. Buffett, 90, confirmed the plan to the business network after Berkshire’s annual meeting over the weekend. “The directors are in agreement that if something were to happen to me tonight, it would be Greg who’d take over tomorrow morning,” Buffett told CNBC. Abel, 59, is vice chairman of Berkshire’s non-insurance operations.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Infineon runs at ‘full speed’
First-quarter results at German semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies AG were boosted by strong demand, but it said that bottlenecks continue to plague a manufacturing supply chain that is running at “full speed.” Sales in the first quarter hit 2.7 billion euros (US$3.25 billion), compared with the average analyst estimate of 2.69 billion euros. Previous guidance from Infineon placed second-quarter revenue between 2.5 billion euros and 2.8 billion euros, while third-quarter revenue is expected to be between 2.6 billion euros and 2.9 billion euros.
APPAREL
Under Armour fixes charges
US athletic apparel company Under Armour Inc on Monday agreed to pay US$9 million to settle charges by US financial regulators that it misled investors about its revenues. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that for six quarters from the third quarter of 2015 through 2016, Under Armour inflated sales to meet analysts’ expectations. Under Armour said the settlement resolves the charges, while “the company neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s charges,” it said in a statement.
RIDE-HAILING
Bolt unveils car-sharing pilot
Bolt Technology OU, which competes with Uber Technologies Inc in Europe and Africa, would launch a car-sharing project in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, chief executive officer Markus Villig said. If the pilot proves successful, Bolt would quickly expand it to other cities, as it has done with its food delivery service, which operates in 20 countries, Villig said, adding that 500 cars would initially be leased.
ELECTRONICS
Samsung widow’s stake leaps
Hong Ra-hee, the wife of the late Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee, boosted her fortune to more than US$7 billion after receiving billions of dollars in stocks in the much-awaited transfer of her husband’s assets. Hong, 75, inherited about 83 million shares in Samsung Electronics Co, making her the largest individual shareholder in the tech giant with a 2.3 percent stake, a filing last week said. Hong is the richest woman in South Korea, with a net worth of US$7.4 billion as of Monday’s stock market close, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday fined Citibank Taiwan Ltd (花旗台灣) NT$10 million (US$357,194) and DBS Bank Taiwan (星展台灣) NT$6 million for breaches of the nation’s anti-money laundering (AML) regulations. The NT$10 million fine is the highest penalty that it has imposed on a domestic bank, the commission said. Citibank Taiwan failed to set up a sound mechanism for evaluating clients’ risk of money laundering and for detecting suspicious transactions, Banking Bureau Deputy Director-General Huang Kuang-hsi (黃光熙) told a news conference in New Taipei City. The bank based its AML policies on those of its US-based parent company, Citigroup Inc, but the policies
The rise of the cryptocurrency dogecoin has reached a new level after the token was used to pay for a lunar satellite launch. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s commercial rocket firm, is to embark on a moon voyage next year carrying a so-called cubesat — a mini-satellite used for space research — from Geometric Energy Corp that has been paid for entirely in dogecoin. The development is the latest twist in the saga over the digital token, which started as a joke in 2013, but is now a dominating Internet meme and sitting on a 21,000 percent rally in the past year. Musk has
CAPACITY EXPANSION: Construction of the site, which is to be the firm’s first mRNA production facility outside of Europe, is to begin this year and likely finish in 2023 COVID-19 vaccine maker BioNTech SE yesterday said it would build a Southeast Asia headquarters and manufacturing site in Singapore to produce hundreds of millions of messenger RNA (mRNA)-based vaccines per year. Construction of the site would start this year, and it could become operational by 2023, the German company said in a statement. “With this planned mRNA production facility, we will increase our overall network capacity, and expand our ability to manufacture and deliver our mRNA vaccines and therapies to people around the world,” BioNTech chief executive Ugur Sahin said. The vaccine produced by BioNTech jointly with Pfizer Inc of
COMPETITIVE: The chip designer is offering an annual compensation of NT$1.5 million to NT$2 million, in addition to cash and stock bonuses to attract workers MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest designer of 5G handset chips, is stepping up its recruitment drive this year, with plans to hire more than 2,000 engineers specializing in core technologies, including 5G, wireless communication and artificial intelligence (AI). That would be double from the more than 1,000 people it hired on average in the past few years, as the Hsinchu-based company looks to boost growth this year and beyond. It also comes as the company plans to launch a new 5G chip, Dimensity 2000 series, which supports mmWave technology and sub-6-gigahertz technology, at the end of this year. That would be
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