In a Thursday announcement, crypto exchange FTX US’ derivatives arm said Sommers had become its latest board member in a move seeming to increase the company’s regulatory efforts. Sommers served as a CFTC commissioner from 2007 to 2013 under former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush and was the managing director of regulatory affairs for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More
Additionally, Cardano developer IOHK stated that they are close to clinching “three critical mass indicators” that would lead to the launch of their long-awaited Vasil hard fork in September. Vasil aims to improve Cardano’s scalability and transaction throughput through pipelining.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More
The UK government has won a High Court challenge by three major pension funds over the legality of a planned change to the calculation of inflation that they contend could leave millions of pensioners worse off.Trustees of the BT, Ford and Marks and Spencer pension schemes had brought a judicial review claim against the government over plans by the UK Statistics Authority to reformulate the retail price index inflation measure from 2030 and replace it with CPIH, a version of the Consumer Prices Index that includes housing costs and is seen as a better measure of inflation.The pension funds, which together represent nearly 450,000 members and £83bn in assets, had argued the planned change was unlawful and that it failed to properly take into account the impact on millions of pensioners with defined benefit pensions who would be worse off because their annual increases would switch from RPI to the typically lower CPIH. However on Thursday, the High Court ruled in favour of the UK government and rejected arguments that the government or UK Statistics Authority had overstepped their authority in making the changes. The ruling is significant because 10.5mn people in the UK have private sector final salary pensions, most of which are currently linked to RPI. The pension fund trustees had argued the longer term impact could be worse for women, because statistically they live longer than men. In the judicial review challenge, the pension trustees had claimed that the UK Statistics Authority and the chancellor failed to take into account the impact of the decision on holders of RPI- index linked gilts and bonds and on retirees entitled to index-linked pensions. The pension funds also claimed that the government failed to consult properly with the public about the decision.However Mr Justice David Holgate rejected these arguments. “Parliament did not find it necessary to confer or spell out an express power to change the RPI. Given the history and nature of the RPI as an index measuring consumer price inflation, it is obviously implicit in the duty . . . to compile and maintain that index that the UKSA is able to change it,” he ruled.Ian Diamond, chief executive of the UK Statistics Authority and national statistician, welcomed the ruling and said the proposed changes can legally and practically be made by the authority in February 2030.He said: “At a time of rising prices, it has never been more important to have accurate and trusted measures of inflation. We have been clear for a number of years that the Retail Prices Index is a very poor measure of inflation, at times greatly overestimating and at other times underestimating changes in consumer prices.”The Treasury said: “We welcome today’s judgment, and are committed to the publication of accurate economic data.” A spokesperson for the pension schemes said they were “disappointed” with the ruling. “Many investors, including pension funds, bought index-linked gilts in good faith and now face losses of £90 to £100 billion” said the spokesperson. “This decision will leave millions of pensioners in defined benefit schemes with RPI linked benefits poorer through no fault of their own and facing substantial decreases in their year-on-year income. Women will be particularly impacted since they live longer and retire earlier.”Additional reporting by Josephine Cumbo More
The software will support activities such as data capture, document management, study monitoring and consent. As told by Triall, the purpose of the collaboration is to demonstrate an immutable public ledger audit trail through its blockchain technology to boost the integrity of clinical trials. Investigators, regulators and stakeholders can then review and assess such trial-related data with trust, knowing that no one can modify the records.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More
The factories outside Chennai, in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, are home to an array of global corporate names that lend credibility to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” campaign, which aims to turn Asia’s third-largest economy into a workshop to the world. The state’s industrial parks host international investors such as Renault-Nissan and Hyundai, which have large car factories; Dell makes computers there and Samsung produces TVs, washing machines and fridges. There are enough suppliers to Apple (including Taiwan’s Foxconn and Pegatron, and the Finnish contract manufacturer Salcomp) that people in Tamil Nadu’s business community commonly refer to the American tech group, which does not discuss its suppliers, as “the fruit company”. Now India wants to take a step up the manufacturing value chain, with a high-stakes bid to begin making semiconductors. The Modi government has put $10bn of incentives on the table to tempt manufacturers to set up new “fabs” (semiconductor fabrication plants) and encourage investment in related sectors such as display glass. One plant is being planned in Tamil Nadu. India’s ambition to enter the chipmaking business comes at a time of growing trade and geopolitical tension as western economies have pushed to decouple their supply chains from China, which has invested heavily to become a leader in the semiconductor industry. The Covid-19 pandemic and Beijing’s draconian lockdowns have disrupted global chip supply and sent companies and governments on a hunt for alternative sources of production. India, which has cracked down on Chinese social media apps and phone producers against the backdrop of a long-running geopolitical dispute, is offering itself as a democratic alternative tech hub to China. An employee at a Foxconn-owned phone factory in southern India. The Taiwanese giant has teamed up with Indian group Vedanta to build the first semiconductor plant in the country © Karen Dias/BloombergIf successful, an Indian chipmaking industry has the potential to be extremely lucrative for the country, feeding rapidly growing global demand as well as its domestic industry’s voracious needs for the computers, appliances and cars it already makes. “From a geopolitics point of view, India is attractive . . . We are increasingly one of the largest consumers of semiconductors outside of the US and traditional markets,” says Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s minister of state for electronics and information technology.Manufacturers are now lining up to take up the $10bn offer. Singaporean group IGSS Ventures has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tamil Nadu state government for what its founder and chief executive Raj Kumar says will “very likely” be a wafer factory it wants to build within three years. The Israeli group ISMC, a joint venture between Israel’s Tower Semiconductor and Abu Dhabi-based Next Orbit Ventures, has signed a letter of intent with the state of Karnataka, home of India’s tech capital, Bangalore, to build a $3bn semiconductor chipmaking plant. And Foxconn has teamed up with Indian group Vedanta to build a semiconductor plant, surveying sites in the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” campaign aims to turn Asia’s third-largest economy into a workshop to the world © Saurabh Das/AP
Young Liu, Foxconn’s chair, said on an investor call in August that the group “will be actively expanding” in India. While declining to comment on specific products, he noted “improvements in the overall industry environment in India” adding: “We think India will play a very important role in the future.”Even given its geopolitical advantages, the road ahead will not be smooth for India as it tries to market itself abroad as an alternative to China. There are risks inherent in the push, not least that Europe, the UK, the US and many other countries are simultaneously laying out billions to subsidise the onshoring of chipmaking, in a move that analysts say is bound to increase global chip capacity. To have any chance of achieving its goal, India will need to move exceptionally quickly and decisively.‘A whole lot of deficiencies’The complexity of semiconductor production and supply chains means that manufacturers in a handful of east Asian countries, led by China, Taiwan and South Korea, have been responsible for much of global supply. That is now changing. In July, the US passed the Chips and Science Act that includes $52bn of grants to support chipmaking and research and development. Meanwhile the EU is looking to build semiconductor resilience with its own €43bn Chips Act. While India does not yet make microchips commercially, it does contribute to the design of semiconductors because of its strong software base, says Mahinthan Joseph Mariasingham, a statistician and researcher with the Asian Development Bank. “When it comes to manufacturing, India has lagged behind many of the other countries, partly because of its lack of facilitating infrastructure,” he says. “It was easy for them to get into the software market because it doesn’t require elaborate physical infrastructure.” A push into microchip production, which demands some of the most exacting factory conditions of any in manufacturing, would mark a major shift for India. The country has built a reputation as one of the world’s foremost producers (and exporters) of engineering talent, but has struggled to capture a share of top-notch tech manufacturing relative to its 1.4bn population that would come close to that of either China or Vietnam. Multinationals in lower-tech sectors have long struggled with the country’s at times erratic transport and public utilities. Making silicon chips requires the utmost precision: an interruption in power or water supply lasting just a few seconds can lead to multimillion-dollar losses. Power cuts are common in much of India, prompting many companies to build their own electricity supply. India’s traditional competitive advantage in low wages will give it little or no edge in the capital-intensive business of making chips. There are also questions about whether the $10bn will be money well spent. India has a tradition, dating back to its post-independence years, of disastrous import substitution policies — measures put in place to protect or promote local industries that instead ended up wasting money and holding back the broader economy. Some analysts believe India could spend state money better by applying its proven advantages in nurturing skilled IT talent to designing chips for the world to manufacture rather than making its own.“It’s an attempt to follow the China path and create manufacturing in India,” says Raghuram Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and former governor of the Reserve Bank of India. “But you have to ask why people aren’t manufacturing in India . . . There are a bunch of reasons the government itself accepts: we don’t have the logistics, we don’t have the utilities. Sometimes we don’t have the R&D and the workers . . . There are a whole lot of deficiencies.” Reviving an industryIf manufacturers in India harbour any doubts about a national foray into chipmaking, they are not voicing them. Instead, the generous central government and local incentives that will defray their initial costs — and a blast of nationalistic, can-do rhetoric from the government — has been welcomed by Indian business. “This is India’s moment,” wrote Anil Agarwal, chair of the natural resources group Vedanta in a LinkedIn post marking the 75th anniversary of Indian independence in August.Anil Agarwal, chair of India’s Vedanta, describes the forthcoming tie-up with Foxconn to manufacture chips in India as “a beautiful partnership” © Simon Dawson/Bloomberg“In the next 25 years, we will build the world’s leading technology hub, even better than Silicon Valley,” claimed the industrialist, who began his career as a Mumbai scrap-metal trader. His subsequent rise through the metals and mining business to sit at the helm of a globally diversified conglomerate is sometimes seen as an exemplar of India’s rise up the business value chain. Vedanta is now set to be one of the country’s first to make chips, in what Agarwal describes as “a beautiful partnership” with Foxconn of Taiwan, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer. “Most of the technology work will be done by Foxconn,” says Agarwal. The operation, he adds, will produce both semiconductors and display glass, which Vedanta already makes in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. For its part, Foxconn is giving little information about its plans for the venture, but points out that it has been an early mover in new markets before. “Foxconn goes to places no one thinks of going at the time,” says Jimmy Huang, acting spokesperson for the company, whose trading name is Hon Hai Technology Group. “Look at our global footprint and consider when we set up shop in each location . . . Today no one believes that India can build up a semiconductor supply chain, but Foxconn is working with the government to set up a semiconductor industry.” Madhav Kalyan, chief executive of JPMorgan India, says the bank is advising some companies discussing financing operations for chip ventures in India. “They do believe, based on their interactions with the government and this dedicated body, that there is a nuanced understanding of what it takes — and that the government is willing to invest to make it happen,” he says. India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw unveiled New Delhi’s pitch to chipmakers last December with the India Semiconductor Mission © Nathan Laine/BloombergNew Delhi laid out its pitch to chipmakers last December with the India Semiconductor Mission, unveiled by the IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. “We have a strategy of broadening and deepening our electronics ecosystem. It’s about laying out the red carpet and bringing in a lot of companies who are seeking to diversify their manufacturing away from being only in China to other places,” says Chandrasekhar. When Modi came to power in 2014, he says, India had “an almost moribund, nothing electronics industry”, which had been “cannibalised and devastated” by years of free trade agreements. Today, he says, India’s ambition is to more than triple its revenues from the electronics industry to $300bn by 2026, up from $75bn in 2021, and to export $120bn of this amount. Aside from the central government subsidies, business-friendly states in India’s south and west are vying with one another to capture investments, with tax and other incentives, as well as assurances on land, water, power and other production inputs.
Business-friendly Indian state Tamil Nadu is already home to multinationals including Tata © Arun sankar/AFP/Getty Images
“We give so many incentives, starting with land, the biggest thing in short supply,” says P Thiaga Rajan, Tamil Nadu’s finance minister and a former Standard Chartered and Lehman Brothers banker, who has been active in luring investors to the state. “We have a very proactive policy.” He points to Tamil Nadu’s past support for investors, including Tata and Foxconn, in building their operations in the state: “We have figured out how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.” The lagging edgeSome observers of India’s ambitions to push into semiconductors argue that its heavy emphasis on building up local chip fabrication misses the mark, in a fiercely competitive global industry. They ask how much the industry will have to show for itself when the subsidy money runs out. “In the semiconductor value chain, there are a lot of steps in the process, and the actual fabrication of chips is only one,” says Christopher Miller, a professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School and author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, a book about global rivalry in semiconductors. “Many countries that play a big role in the process don’t make chips — and that can still be a lucrative role to play.” While India might plausibly set up factories making “lagging edge” chips of the kind usable in cars and appliances — which are much in demand in places such as Chennai — it will still struggle to compete against efficient Taiwanese producers or the heavily subsidised Chinese, he says. Instead of trying to take on longer-established producers in China and elsewhere and setting up “fabs” producing lagging-edge chips made using legacy technology, Miller argues, India might better use its money in chip assembly and packaging facilities, where labour costs are more important. If India were to direct its subsidies, he says, “$10bn could go a long way”. Workers at Siliconware Precision Industries factory in Taiwan. The country currently leads the world in semiconductor manufacturing © Maurice Tsai/BloombergRajan, the former central banker, argues that India should be focusing on building human capital rather than chip factories. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to build the software rather than focus on the hardware — and educate 10,000 Indians who can do chip design?” he says.Rather than trying to direct investment into chip fabrication capabilities, Rajan says, India could channel $100mn into 100 new universities that would train graduates — not just in engineering — and “seed many sectors”. “Even if you were interested in chips alone, training software and design engineers can be the road toward [a major chip designer such as the US’s] Qualcomm, which might be far easier and cheaper”, he says, than imitating a leading manufacturer like Taiwan’s TSMC.But early investors in the sector echo the government’s view that demand from a growing domestic electronics industry, coupled with the government’s help in defraying producers’ start-up costs, will inevitably support a full value chain, given India’s pool of engineering talent. Kumar, of IGSS Ventures, who formerly worked for chipmaking giant Global Foundries, points out that Singapore, with a population of less than 6M and where the domestic consumption of semiconductors is “peanuts”, already hosts several wafer fabs.“Imagine the potential of India,” he says. “For a country that’s going to be a top economic nation, it needs some minimum semiconductor capabilities domestically.” More
LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. federal prosecutors asked Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, to provide extensive internal records about its anti-money laundering checks, along with communications involving its chief executive and founder Changpeng Zhao, according to a late-2020 written request seen by Reuters.The Justice Department’s money laundering section asked Binance to voluntarily hand over messages from Zhao and 12 other executives and partners on matters including the exchange’s detection of illegal transactions and recruitment of U.S. customers. It also sought any company records with instructions that “documents be destroyed, altered, or removed from Binance’s files” or “transferred from the United States.”The December 2020 request, which has not been previously reported, was part of a Justice Department investigation into Binance’s compliance with U.S. financial crime laws that remains ongoing, four people familiar with the inquiry said.U.S. authorities, the people said, are investigating whether Binance violated the Bank Secrecy Act. This requires crypto exchanges to register with the Treasury Department and comply with anti-money laundering requirements if they conduct “substantial” business in the United States. The law, designed to protect the U.S. financial system from illicit finance, provides for jail terms of up to 10 years.Reuters could not establish how Binance and Zhao, one of the most prominent figures in the crypto sector, responded to the request from the department’s criminal division.In response to Reuters’ questions about the letter and investigation, Binance Chief Communications Officer Patrick Hillmann said, “Regulators across the globe are reaching out to every major crypto exchange to better understand our industry. This is a standard process for any regulated organization and we work with agencies regularly to address any questions they may have.” Binance has “an industry leading global security and compliance team” with over 500 employees, including former regulators and law enforcement agents, Hillmann added.He didn’t say how Binance responded to the Justice Department request. A Department spokesman declined to comment.The request reveals the broad scope of the U.S. investigation into Binance. The probe’s existence was reported last year by Bloomberg but until now little has been known about it. A Binance spokeswoman told Bloomberg at the time, “We take our legal obligations very seriously and engage with regulators and law enforcement in a collaborative fashion.”The letter made 29 separate requests for documents produced since 2017, covering the company’s management, structure, finances, anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance, and business in the United States. “Binance is requested to produce all documents and materials that are responsive to this letter in its possession, custody, or control,” it said.Binance was launched by Zhao, known as CZ, in Shanghai in 2017 and as of July controlled over half of the world’s crypto trading markets, processing transactions worth more than $2 trillion that month. Born in China and educated in Canada, where he holds citizenship, Zhao told Bloomberg in March that he will be based for the “foreseeable future” in Dubai, which that month granted Binance a license to conduct some operations.A series of Reuters articles this year revealed how Binance drove its explosive growth while keeping weak customer checks and withholding information from regulators. Reuters found that the gaps in Binance’s compliance programme enabled criminals to launder at least $2.35 billion in illicit funds through the exchange, which also served traders in Iran despite U.S. sanctions. Until mid-2021, Binance customers could trade crypto by registering with just an email address.Binance disputed Reuters’ findings, calling them “outdated.” The exchange said it is “driving higher industry standards” and seeking to “further improve our ability to detect illegal crypto activity on our platform.” It said it did not consider Reuters’ calculations of illicit fund flows to be accurate. U.S. SCRUTINYCrypto exchanges are under increasing scrutiny in the United States, where top government figures including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this year have publicly backed greater regulation of the sector. In February, the Justice Department established a national cryptocurrency enforcement team to “tackle the growth of crime involving these technologies,” with a focus on exchanges.That month, the founders of another exchange, BitMEX, pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and were later sentenced to up to two and a half years of probation. BitMEX agreed to pay a $100 million fine to settle separate charges for breaching the Act. BitMEX now says it “fully committed to operating its business in compliance with all applicable laws” and has made “substantial investments” in its compliance programme.The Justice Department’s 2020 letter was addressed to Binance Holdings Ltd., a company in the Cayman Islands, and to Roberto Gonzalez, a Washington-based attorney at law firm Paul, Weiss. Binance Holdings owns the Binance trademark and, according to regulatory filings, is owned by Zhao. Gonzalez and Paul, Weiss did not respond to requests to comment.Binance has an opaque corporate structure. It has declined to give details of the ownership or location of its main Binance.com exchange, which has not accepted customers in the United States since mid-2019. Clients there are instead directed to a separate U.S.-based exchange called Binance.US, which also is controlled by Zhao, regulatory filings show. Binance.US registered with the Treasury in 2019; the main exchange never did so.Since last year, over a dozen financial regulators around the world have issued warnings about Binance, saying it was either serving users without licenses or violating anti-money laundering rules. In July, the Dutch central bank said it had fined Binance over 3 million euros for operating in breach of its financial crime laws. A Binance spokesperson said at the time that the fine marked a “pivot in our ongoing collaboration” with the central bank.In the 2020 request, the Justice Department sought all documents that identified Binance employees responsible for compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act, details of its policies to combat illegal finance, and any reports of suspicious financial activity it had filed to authorities. Binance was asked to provide information on any transactions between the exchange and users involved in ransomware, terrorism and darknet marketplaces, along with those targeted by U.S. sanctions.The department also requested documents related to the “business rationale” for establishing Binance.US. It asked for communications involving the 13 executives and partners – including Zhao, his co-founder Yi He, and his chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim – on the subject of “the creation of Binance.US and its relationship to Binance.” Lim and He are still at Binance.Reuters reported in January that Lim and other senior employees were aware that Binance’s money-laundering checks were not rigorous, according to company messages reviewed by the news agency. Neither Lim nor Binance has commented on the messages.In addition to the Justice Department request, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a subpoena to Binance.US’s operator, BAM Trading Services, that same month. The subpoena, reviewed by Reuters, required BAM to hand over documents showing whether any employees also worked for the main Binance exchange and what services it was providing the U.S. company.Binance.US did not respond to Reuters’ questions. The SEC said it does not comment on possible investigations.((reporting by Angus Berwick and Tom Wilson; editing by Janet McBride)) More
In a statement, founder Ramon Recuero explained that the platform experienced an insurmountable negative streak despite their team’s efforts to endure the domino effect caused by the hack. According to Recuero, the protocol lost $3.4 million in the hack. Following this, the total value locked within the platform went from $30 million to $4 million. To make matters worse, the Fuse pool was abandoned, taking out the lending market worth $10 million, Recuero noted. Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More
ROME (Reuters) – The Italian government is preparing a new multi-billion euro package to help shield firms and families from surging energy costs and rising consumer prices, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Thursday.The measures are likely to be worth at least 10 billion euros ($10.01 billion), a government source told Reuters.They come on top of some 52 billion euros already budgeted this year to soften the impact of sky-high electricity, gas and petrol costs, and will be approved a few weeks ahead of a Sept. 25 national election.”Next week, the cabinet will adopt a new decree to curb the increase in energy bills,” Di Maio told reporters.Italian inflation jumped to 9.0% in August from 8.4% the month before, driven up by electricity and gas prices, preliminary data showed on Wednesday.Business lobby Confcommercio and several retail bodies have called on outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi to extend tax relief to help firms tackle the energy crunch, and to rule that bills can be paid in smaller instalments.Draghi has so far financed his anti-inflation packages with increased revenue from value added tax as a result of the higher energy costs and by adjusting other areas of the state budget, without increasing borrowing.He has so far refused to hike this year’s fiscal deficit above the target of 5.6% of national output which was set in April, despite pressure from several parties for him to do so.Before finalising next week’s package, the government wants to assess how much it will garner from a 25% windfall tax on energy groups that have benefited from surging oil and gas prices, political sources said.Under the windfall tax scheme, a 40% down-payment was due by the end of June but thousands of companies refused to pay, leaving the government facing a potential revenue shortfall of more than 9 billion euros.In response, Draghi said last month the down-payment would carry a 30% surcharge if paid by Aug. 31, after which it would rise to 60%.As part of the relief package, the Treasury plans to fund an extraordinary layoff scheme to help firms hit by energy costs to furlough staff rather than sack them, the sources said.($1 = 0.9988 euros) More
