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☆ Singapore's Temasek writes down $275 million in FTX, calls belief in Sam Bankman-Fried 'misplaced'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New Delhi CNN Business —Singapore has become the latest backer of crypto exchange FTX to admit being burned by its spectacular collapse. FTX Group abruptly filed for bankruptcy in the United States last Friday when its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, resigned as CEO. This “write down of our investment in FTX will not have significant impact on our overall performance,” Temasek said in the statement. Last week, investor Sequoia Capital said it had marked the value of its FTX stake down to $0. Last week, crypto lending platform BlockFi said it was pausing customer withdrawals.

☆ TSMC stock surges after Warren Buffett's company buys $4 billion stake
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New Delhi CNN Business —Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company surged on Tuesday after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that it had purchased a $4.1 billion stake in one of the world’s largest chipmakers. Shares of TSMC were up over 8% in Taiwan on Tuesday. “TSMC welcomes all investors with the propensity to buy and hold TSMC’s stock,” a spokesperson for the chipmaker said. TSMC accounts for an estimated 90% of the world’s super-advanced computer chips, supplying tech giants including Apple (AAPL) and Qualcomm (QCOM). Experts fear that these controls could shift the tech arms race between the United States and China to a whole new level.

☆ FTX collapse: The latest updates on the cryptocurrency crisis
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

New Delhi CNN Business —Aftershocks from the massive earthquake in the trillion-dollar crypto industry last week continued to be felt on Monday. The episode has not just destroyed confidence in the crypto industry, but it will also embolden global regulators to tighten the screws. There is a “lot of risk,” said Changpeng Zhao, who runs the crypto exchange Binance. On Saturday, FTX said it was looking into whether crypto assets were stolen and has since moved all its digital assets offline. Crypto risk management firm Elliptic said although the theft was unconfirmed, $473 million in crypto assets were apparently stolen from FTX.

☆ Twitter layoffs in India, Africa could weaken the company in its biggest growth markets
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Twitter laid off thousands of employees across the company on Friday, including staff in India and Africa. Under siege in critical marketsEven before the layoffs, Twitter was going through a tough time in both India and Africa. Tech experts now fear that the company will find it even harder to navigate new laws in emerging markets. Twitter does not share user numbers, but according to India, the platform has 17.5 million users in the country. “Content moderation has to be specific to geography,” said Vivan Sharan, partner at Delhi-based tech policy consulting firm Koan Advisory Group.

New Delhi CNN Business —One of Apple’s largest suppliers is trying to strike a delicate balance in China. Foxconn’s statement came just a day after Apple said it expects iPhone 14 shipments to be hit by China’s Covid curbs, which have “significantly reduced capacity” at the Zhengzhou facility, the world’s biggest iPhone factory. “The epidemic has disrupted our work and life, but… the company has achieved milestone results in the current epidemic prevention measures,” Foxconn said on its Zhengzhou recruitment WeChat account on Monday. New workers will be offered a salary of 30 yuan ($4) per hour, according to the post. Last Wednesday, Chinese authorities imposed a seven-day lockdown on the manufacturing zone that houses the Foxconn plant.

☆ iPhone 14 shipments hit by China's Covid curbs in Zhengzhou affecting Foxconn
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-06 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New Delhi CNN Business —Apple has said that shipments of its latest lineup of iPhones will be “temporarily impacted” by Covid restrictions in China. In a statement on Sunday, the company said that its assembly facility located in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou is “currently operating at significantly reduced capacity,” due to Covid curbs. “We continue to see strong demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models,” the tech giant said. However, the company expects lower shipments for those models than “previously anticipated and customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products,”Apple added. While Apple (AAPL) has become the latest victim of China’s Covid curbs, it is weathering the global economic downturn better than fellow tech giants.

☆ From Apple to Disney, China's Covid curbs are again hurting business Apple to Disneyland, everyone is suffering under China's draconian Covid curbs
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New Delhi CNN Business —It has been almost three years since Covid-19 first hit China, but the country’s relentless adherence to lockdowns continues to hobble business and the economy. On Wednesday, authorities imposed a seven-day lockdown of the area that houses China’s biggest iPhone assembly factory, in the central city of Zhengzhou. State media has said that many Foxconn workers are among those walking miles on the highways to escape the factory. On Wednesday, Chinese state media outlet National Business Daily said that electric carmaker Nio (NIO) shut down two factories in the eastern city of Hefei because of Covid curbs. Authorities have ramped up Covid restrictions after Xi’s sweeping power grab at the Communist Party Congress last month, and cases are rising.

New Delhi CNN Business —Foxconn, one of Apple’s largest suppliers, is wrestling with major disruption at its biggest iPhone assembly factory in China, as anxious workers reportedly flee the facility, according to social media videos. “[We] fully understand your eagerness to go back home,” Foxconn told its employees over the weekend, according to a post on Zhengzhou government’s official WeChat account. The Zhengzhou campus is the world’s biggest iPhone factory and typically accounts for as much as 85% of iPhone assembly capacity, according to Lam’s estimates. State media has said that many Foxconn workers are among those walking miles to escape the city. While these disruptions will impact iPhone production in the near term, analysts say it may not dent Apple’s iPhone shipments in the key holiday season.

☆ Indian regulators hit Google with $162 million fine over anticompetitive practices
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-21 | by ( Swati Gupta | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New Delhi CNN Business —Google is facing the heat in India. The country’s antitrust regulator has imposed a penalty of approximately 13.4 billion rupees ($162 million) on Alphabet Inc’s Google for abusing its “dominant position in multiple markets in the Android mobile device ecosystem.”The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has asked Google to modify its conduct in relation to anti-competitive practices. Google has been pouring some serious cash into India, which is a key overseas market for American tech firms. The world’s second most populous country has 750 million internet users, and millions more are expected to come online in the future. In 2020, Google said it was planning to invest $10 billion in India as part of plans to make the internet “affordable and useful” for a billion people.

☆ Indian billionaire Gautam Adani was a college dropout. Now he may be too big to fail
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-10 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s conglomerate had just launched a hostile bid to take over an influential broadcaster in the capital. Rupak De Chowdhuri/ReutersMuch of his fortune is tied up in the sprawling Adani Group, which he founded over 30 years ago. Most of the companies in the Adani empire are held closely by the billionaire, his family and associated firms, including nearly 75% stakes in AEL, Adani Power, and Adani Transmissions. Yet, the Adani Group has continued to raise billions from Indian and foreign banks. CreditSights, a research firm owned by Fitch Group, in August published a report about Adani Group titled “Deeply Overleveraged” in which it expressed strong concerns.

Hong Kong/Tokyo CNN Business —A quarter of a century ago, a major financial crisis ripped through Asia, shaking its economies to the core. “I do not expect a repeat of the [1997] Asian Financial Crisis this time,” said Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ Research. “Importantly, there is not the same build up of foreign denominated debt in recent years, which was one of the triggers of the Asian Financial Crisis,” Goh added. China and Japan have the world’s two biggest foreign exchange reserves, holding $3 trillion and $1.3 trillion respectively. “Asia’s resilience in the face of the current global storm is partly the result of reform that the Asian Financial Crisis prompted,” Neumann from HSBC said.

☆ Gautam Adani: Asia's richest man sees growing isolation for China
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-27 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New Delhi CNN Business —Indian billionaire Gautam Adani says that China “will feel increasingly isolated” and the “foremost champion of globalization” would find it hard to bounce back from a period of economic weakness. Speaking at a conference in Singapore on Tuesday, Adani said “increasing nationalism, supply chain risk mitigation, and technology restrictions,” as well as resistance to Beijing’s huge Belt and Road initiative, would impact China’s global role. The US government ordered two of America’s top chipmakers to stop selling high-performance chips to China earlier this month. And, last week, leaders of America’s biggest banks said they could exit China if it ever attacks Taiwan. Adani also mentioned the challenges facing the United Kingdom, and countries in the European Union, because of the war in Ukraine and Brexit.

☆ Apple is making the iPhone 14 in India as China headaches mount
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-26 | by ( Diksha Madhok | Cnn Business | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

New Delhi (CNN Business) Apple has started making its new iPhone 14 in India, as the technology giant looks to diversify its supply chain away from China. While the company manufactures the bulk of its products in China, it has decided to start producing its latest devices in India much earlier than with previous generations. The latest devices offer updated camera systems, a new interactive lock screen and on Pro models, much faster performance. "The new iPhone 14 lineup introduces groundbreaking new technologies and important safety capabilities. We're excited to be manufacturing iPhone 14 in India," the company said in a statement on Monday, confirming weeks of speculation.

☆ Premarket trading: It's getting late in the game. Will the Fed risk a Hail Mary?
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-15 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Markets plummeted as the report stoked fears that the central bank and Chair Jerome Powell would decide to hike rates more aggressively, inflicting serious economic pain. Investors are putting the odds of a three-quarter percentage point hike next week at 75%, according to CME FedWatch data. The odds for a full point hike are hovering around 25% in the wake of the inflation report, up from 0% one week ago. It meant that people understood the seriousness of the Fed’s commitment to getting inflation rates back down to 2%, he said. “I wouldn’t discount a 100 basis point rate hike,” Marvin Loh, senior strategist at State Street, told me.

☆ Mukesh Ambani prepares to hand Reliance Industries to his children
▼ + stars: | 2022-08-30 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New Delhi CNN Business —Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani has laid out plans to hand his sprawling business empire to his children, while insisting he has no intention of retiring any time soon. He launched Reliance Jio as a mobile network in 2016. They sell everything from smartphones to groceries through various eponymous brands, including Reliance Fresh, Reliance Digital and Reliance Trends. The company is also working with Google (GOOGL) to develop “ultra-affordable 5G smartphones for India,” Ambani said. When Ambani launched Jio, India had fewer than 350 million internet users.

☆ India's young investors prefer crypto to gold and 'boring' stocks
▼ + stars: | 2022-03-03 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

New Delhi CNN Business —Indian businesswoman Swati Daga first bought bitcoin in 2017, when the cryptocurrency was trading well under $3,000. “I find stock markets boring,” she told CNN Business, adding that she enjoys the “thrill” and “recklessness” that comes with investing in volatile currencies. The growth is driven by younger investors — mostly under the age of 35 — and many of them are coming from smaller cities and towns, founders of two of India’s biggest crypto exchanges told CNN Business. WazirX also has over 10 million users, and called 2021 a “phenomenal year” for crypto trading in India. On-again, off-again relationshipThe excitement over crypto is rising in India despite the country’s on-again, off-again relationship with digital currencies.

The AstraZeneca vaccine received approval from UK regulators in December 2020, and Poonawalla became a household name in India. India's Covid-19 tsunamiBut Poonawalla's plans soon went awry when a second wave of Covid-19 hit India in the spring. But by January 2021, the company had a stockpile of just 70 million doses . SII also says that it has increased its production to 220 million doses a month as of October. SII is also expanding its partnerships, having signed a deal with American biotech firm Novavax to manufacture its Covid-19 vaccine, which is awaiting regulatory approvals.

☆ India's got the next big thing in tech, and it could be worth $1 trillion
▼ + stars: | 2021-09-09 | by ( Diksha Madhok | Cnn Business | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Now, Asia's third largest economy is ready for the next big frontier in tech: Coming up with a new generation of software companies like Zoom or Slack. Of India's 10 SaaS unicorns, six reached that milestone in 2020, and investors around the world are paying attention. Thanks to the rise of India's IT industry, software engineering has become one of the most sought-after career options in the country. Despite the euphoria, there are some hurdles Indian companies have to overcome before they can deliver on the $1 trillion promise. SaaS companies, on the other hand, have to say no to 99% of [potential] customers, he added.

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