Author: fortraders

Applied Materials Inc. has announced plans to invest up to $4 billion in a new research center in Sunnyvale, California. The Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center is expected to create up to 2,000 engineering jobs and host $25 billion of research work over its first decade. The center will bring together staff from research universities and major chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

The announcement comes as the U.S. is trying to bring back advanced semiconductor manufacturing with a $52 billion measure passed last year. Applied Materials hopes to reduce the time it takes to turn ideas from research universities into tools used in factories by nearly a third by having the three groups carry out some of their work in parallel. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to attend an Applied Materials’ event in Silicon Valley announcing the center, along with top executives from major chip companies. The Commerce Department has received more than 300 statements of interest for the $39 billion portion of the CHIPS Act for manufacturing incentives.

State Street Corp is taking a step forward in giving retail fund investors more control over their investments. By the end of 2024, the firm’s asset-management arm, State Street Global Advisors, aims to allow investors in $1.5 trillion worth of its index equity assets to influence how their proxy votes will be cast at corporate annual meetings. This move will give investors in products including exchange-traded funds the ability to choose among various voting policies offered by Institutional Shareholder Services.

Other big index fund providers BlackRock Inc and Vanguard Group are also moving to give their clients more control, though not yet to as many individual investors. Together the three firms manage some $20 trillion.

Giving away voting rights could blunt the criticism and distinguish State Street products. Yie-Hsin Hung, CEO of State Street Global Advisors, said that this move is “yet another innovation that amplifies our ongoing mission to democratize investing.”

State Street aims to offer individual voting for funds including the SPDR S&P Dividend ETF, and targets November for certain products. However, investors in funds including the SPDR S&P 500 ETF will not have access to the voting option due to their unit investment trust structure.

In Bangladesh, a dollar shortage is causing a fuel crisis, with the state petroleum company owing more than $300 million and facing an “alarming decrease in fuel reserves”. All fuel imports and marketing are controlled by Bangladesh Petroleum Corp (BPC), which has asked the government to permit domestic commercial banks to settle dues with India in rupees.

The South Asian nation’s dollar reserves have shrunk more than a third since February last year, leaving it with a seven-year low of $30.18 billion by May 17. This has caused power cuts and hurt its exports-oriented garments industry.

BPC imports 500,000 tonnes of refined oil and 100,000 tonnes of crude oil every month, but several fuel suppliers have either sent fewer cargoes than scheduled or threatened to halt supplies. Creditors include Unipec, Vitol, ENOC, Indian Oil Corp Ltd (IOC), PetroChina and Indonesia’s BSP.

BPC has asked the government to allow Bangladesh’s nationalised commercial banks to settle dues with Indian companies in rupees. In September, State Bank of India asked exporters to avoid settling deals with Bangladesh in dollars and other major currencies.

The International Monetary Fund approved loans of $4.7 billion for Bangladesh in January, but rising prices of energy and food because of the war have inflated its import bill and the current account deficit.

Malaysian tycoon Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary is looking to bring in an investor into MMC Port Holdings, a deal that could value the country’s biggest port operator at more than 12 billion ringgit ($2.7 billion). Financial investors and companies have approached MMC Corp about their interest in the ports business, with a potential listing on the Malaysian stock exchange in a few years.

Global investor interest in infrastructure assets has grown due to high inflation and supply chain disruptions, spurring deal discussions in the sector. MMC Ports has seven ports in Malaysia located along the Straits of Malacca, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

Syed Mokhtar also owns a majority stake in DRB-Hicom, which has holdings in national postal service firm Pos Malaysia and unlisted car maker Proton Holdings. Deliberations are ongoing and no decisions have been made yet.