Nomura's Head of Greentech in Asia Chaudhry Is Said to Depart
Chaudhry was a Hong Kong-based managing director at Nomura's investment banking team, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.
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Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
South Korea Weighs US Investment Pledge to Trim Auto Tariff
(Bloomberg) -- The US and South Korea have discussed creating a fund to invest in American projects as part of a trade deal, similar to an agreement Japan struck Tuesday with President Donald Trump, people familiar with the matter said. Trump Awards $1.26 Billion Contract to Build Biggest Immigrant Detention Center in US Why the Federal Reserve's Building Renovation Costs $2.5 Billion The High Costs of Trump's 'Big Beautiful' New Car Loan Deduction Salt Lake City Turns Winter Olympic Bid Into Statewide Bond Boom The scope of the discussions was not immediately clear, but the US has been seeking pledges totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. The talks remain fluid, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the negotiations. Japan's deal saw the country agree to backstop a $550 billion fund in exchange for dropping a threatened 25% tariff to 15%. The discount also applied to automobiles, an important export for the Asian country's economy. The South Korea talks are similarly focused on reaching a 15% tariff rate, including for autos, one of the people said. The deal may also include a pledge by South Korea to purchase more goods in key sectors, one of the people said, again echoing the Japan pact, which included an agreement to purchase Boeing Co. planes and agriculture products. The White House declined to comment. The South Korean trade ministry also declined to comment. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said he would meet with South Korean officials on Thursday. In a CNBC interview, Lutnick argued Tokyo's agreement put pressure on Seoul to accept similar terms. 'You could hear the expletives out of Korea when they read the Japanese deal,' Lutnick said. 'The Koreans, like the Europeans, very much want to make a deal.' Trump has threatened to impose a higher general tariff of 25% starting Aug. 1, in addition to the existing levies on vehicles, vehicle parts and steel that are straining ties between Seoul and Washington. A Korean trade delegation is in Washington this week for talks, according to the Asian nation's finance ministry, and Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo is set to meet with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer as part of those discussions. However, a planned '2+2' dialogue that was scheduled for July 25 with Yeo and Finance Minister Koo Yoon-cheol alongside Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was postponed and will be rescheduled, the Korean side said. Lutnick has suggested a $400 billion figure in talks with South Korea, one of the people said. Lutnick presented that same number to Trump as part of talks with Japan but the US president eventually negotiated the fund up to $550 billion. South Korea is preparing to propose at least $100 billion in US investment pledges, Yonhap News reported, citing unidentified sources. The funds were secured through consultations with the nation's conglomerates, including Samsung Electronics Co., SK, Hyundai Motor Co. and LG Electronics Inc., and could grow if government support is added. Seoul had planned to unveil a $100 billion offer during the now-postponed July 25 talks, according to Yonhap. While smaller than Japan's pledges, South Korea's economy, at less than half the size of Japan's, makes matching the same dollar-value pledges a significant challenge for Seoul. Some South Korean companies have already made significant investment pledges in the US. The chairman of Hyundai visited the White House in March to announce a $21 billion investment plan that includes an expansion of vehicle production in Georgia and a new steel plant in Louisiana. The deal with Japan threatens to create a competitive advantage for that country's automakers if Seoul is unable to reach a similar agreement. 'This really puts a lot of pressure on South Korea. If they can get 15%, I'm sure they'd be thrilled but they are in a different position than Japan,' said William Chou, deputy director of the Japan Chair at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. That notion was echoed by the White House on Wednesday. 'We're in a situation where, for example, German cars, are going to be at a disadvantage now, to Japanese cars, because it's a 25% tariff on German. Same thing with Hyundais from South Korea,' White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Wednesday on Bloomberg Television. Navarro said the Japanese deal was best interpreted as the president 'doing a synergistic whole deal with the rest of the world.' 'This is just one part of that chess game,' he said. Trump, speaking at an artificial intelligence event earlier Wednesday, suggested that he would not go below 15% as he sets so-called reciprocal tariff rates — while also indicating he would reward nations that removed trade barriers on US exports. 'The tariff is very important, but the opening of a country, I think, can be more important if our businesses do the job that they're supposed to be doing,' Trump said. 'Such openings are worthy of many points in tariffs.' --With assistance from Heesu Lee, Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Derek Wallbank and Yuko Takeo. (Updates to include Lutnick comments starting in sixth paragraph) Burning Man Is Burning Through Cash Elon Musk's Empire Is Creaking Under the Strain of Elon Musk It's Not Just Tokyo and Kyoto: Tourists Descend on Rural Japan A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border What the Tough Job Market for New College Grads Says About the Economy ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
Forbes
27 minutes ago
- Forbes
China Market Update: Law Draft Focuses On Overcapacity And Price Wars
CLN Asian equities were mixed overnight, as Japan and Mainland China outperformed. It was a relatively quiet night with Hong Kong and Mainland China semis higher on President Trump's AI Action Plan as Mainland China had a very broad rally led by Shenzhen growth stocks while mega cap banks, oil, and telecom lagged. Remember our thesis that foreign investors will always favor growth stocks when investing in China! Hong Kong and Mainland China were led by healthcare and materials. The biggest news item today was the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) announced a price law amendment draft that included 'criteria for identifying unfair price behavior' including 'identifying low-priced dumping', 'improve the identification standards of unfair price behaviors such as price collusion' and stated industry leaders 'shall not use their influence or dominant position in the industry to force or bundle sales of goods'. There will be a consequence for such behavior as 'improve the legal responsibility for price violations' such as 'punishment for unfair price behaviors' and for those 'who violate the clearly marked price'. This draft is extensive, though one line that jumps out is 'dumping at a price lower than the cost'. Reuters had a good article on rising commodity prices in China and the government's overcapacity crackdown (I'll put it on X/Twitter @ahern_brendan). Another thesis is that China's deflationary days are over, in addition to China exporting deflation. Hopefully, the restaurant delivery war between Meituan, Alibaba, and will also end. Meituan +0.9% seems to see the writing on the wall as the company held a symposium in Shanghai with participants in its ecosystem, which included restaurant owners voicing concern that the current delivery price war is weighing on restaurant dining. Remember, we had Shanghai's local SAMR meet with Meituan, and Alibaba yesterday. Hong Kong growth stocks were mixed, with Tencent +0.91%, while NetEase -3.25%, CATL -1.24%, and Alibaba -0.5%. Biotech was led higher by WuxiBiologics +3.83% which announced that the 1st half of 2025 revenue will increase ~16% YoY and net income ~56% YoY. Mainland Chinese investors bought $473mm of Hong Kong stocks via Southbound Stock Connect. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) met with local SOEs in Beijing to discuss implementing reforms and becoming more efficient. President Xi met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa on EU-China relations. Premier Li met with EU Commission Chairman von der Leyen on trade. He will also give a speech at the opening of the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on July 26th. The China equity rally is a sleeper of a trade (not just YTD but since January 2024), though the renminbi's rally versus the US dollar is even more so. On April 9th, USD/CNY hit 7.34 versus today's close of 7.15. Yes, the US dollar index is off nearly twice as much in percentage terms versus CNY's gains. Maybe countries should accuse the US of being a currency manipulator! Just kidding! New Content Read our latest article: KraneShares KOID ETF: Humanoid Robot Rings Nasdaq Opening Bell Please click here to read Chart1 Chart2 Chart3 Chart4 Chart5 Chart6
Gizmodo
an hour ago
- Gizmodo
Google's AI Master Plan in One Number
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, delivered a standout quarterly report on Wednesday, with robust growth across Search, YouTube, and Cloud. But buried beneath the strong revenues was a number that tells a much bigger story about the future of technology: $85 billion. That is Google's new budget for capital expenditures this year, a stunning $10 billion increase from its previous February's forecast. This colossal sum is being poured into the physical foundations of artificial intelligence: building more data centers, accelerating their construction, and filling them with tens of thousands of specialized servers and custom-designed chips. It is proof that the price of competing in the AI era is a full-scale infrastructure war, and Google is determined to win it by out-building everyone else. The reason for this massive spending is simple: demand for AI is growing at a nearly incomprehensible rate. CEO Sundar Pichai provided, in remarks recorded by the company, a metric to make this abstract concept tangible. In May, Google's systems processed 480 trillion 'tokens,' the basic units of data that AI models like Gemini use to read, write, and reason. Just a few months later, that number has more than doubled to 980 trillion monthly tokens. This exponential growth is a computational tidal wave, and it requires a physical response. Every AI-generated image, every summarized document, and every conversational response from the Gemini app consumes immense processing power. To meet this demand, Google is in a constant race to build the digital factories where this work happens. Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi explained, during the call with analysts, the spending hike is driven by 'additional investment in servers, the timing of delivery of servers, and an acceleration in the pace of data center construction, primarily to meet cloud customer demand.' What sets Google apart in this arms race is its strategy of owning the entire technology pipeline, what Pichai calls a 'differentiated, full-stack approach to AI.' This means Google not only designs the world's most advanced AI models but also controls the physical infrastructure they run on. This includes its global network of AI-optimized data centers and, crucially, its own custom-designed Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). These are specialized chips built for the exact kind of mathematics that powers AI, giving Google a significant advantage in both performance and cost over competitors who must rely on more general-purpose chips from third parties. This control over the 'full stack' creates a powerful competitive moat. While other companies, even major AI labs, must rent their computing power, Google owns the factory. This is why, as Pichai noted, 'nearly all gen AI unicorns use Google Cloud,' and why advanced research labs are specifically choosing Google's TPUs to train their own models. OpenAI recently said that it expected to use Google's cloud infrastructure for its popular ChatGPT service. OpenAI Quietly Turns to Google to Stay Online The $85 billion bet is about more than keeping up with demand. It is a long-term strategy to build and control the foundational layer of the next era of computing. By investing so heavily in the digital equivalent of roads, power grids, and factories, Google aims to ensure its dominance for the next decade. Any company that wants to build a significant AI application will, in some way, likely have to run it on infrastructure built by Google. Even with this massive spending, the company is still racing to keep up. Ashkenazi delivered a crucial warning that Google expects to 'remain in a tight demand-supply environment going into 2026.' This reveals the sheer intensity of the AI arms race. The demand for AI compute is so ferocious that even a company spending $85 billion in a single year is struggling to build fast enough. Google's message is clear: The AI revolution will not be built on code alone. It will be built on a foundation of silicon, fiber optics, and concrete. The $10 billion spending increase is the non-negotiable price of victory, a down payment on a future where Google doesn't just lead in artificial intelligence, but owns the planet it runs on.
