■MEDIA
NY Times Co warns unions
The New York Times Co has threatened to shut down the Boston Globe unless the Globe’s unions agree to US$20 million in cost-cutting measures, it was reported yesterday. The demands were made during a 90-minute meeting between Times and Globe executives and the newspaper’s 13 unions, the Globe reported. The concessions include pay cuts, terminating the company’s pension contributions and eliminating lifetime job guarantees, said Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild — the Globe’s biggest union. The Globe, which began publishing in 1872, was sold to the New York Times Co in 1993.
■CHINA
Ministry shops globally
Beijing will send more commercial missions overseas to make purchases and investments this year, Minister of Commerce Chen Deming (陳德銘) said. “China won’t turn to protectionism just because of some temporary difficulties in its economic development,” Chen said at a London briefing after G20 policymakers agreed on steps to combat a global recession. Chinese companies spent more than US$13 billion during a purchasing tour in February to Germany, Switzerland, Spain and the UK. The ministry will send a business group on a buying trip to the US late this month, the 21st Century Business Herald reported last week.
■LOGISTICS
FedEx fires 1,000 workers
FedEx Corp laid off 1,000 employees on Friday after third-quarter earnings dropped 75 percent. FedEx said half of the dismissed workers — all of whom were salaried or management employees — were employed in Memphis, where the corporation and its largest operating unit, FedEx Express, are headquartered. The company reported earnings of US$97 million, or US$0.31 a share, compared with US$393 million, or US$1.26 a share, a year earlier in the period from December to February. Revenue fell 14 percent from the previous year, to US$8.14 billion, and 14.7 percent from the previous financial quarter.
■FINANCE
Japanese bank profits fall
Japan’s three biggest banking groups are expected to report net losses for the fiscal year to last Tuesday in the wake of the global financial crisis, local media reported yesterday. It would be the first net loss by the three — Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Mizuho Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc — in six years, the Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei business daily reported. The three, which previously projected net profits for the fiscal year, are expected to downgrade their forecasts by the end of this month, the Asahi said. The expected losses are mainly because of larger-than-expected bad debts and a sharp decline in their shareholdings as the nation’s financial markets struggle to recover from the crisis, the newspaper said.
■ELECTRONICS
Satyam to name bid
Satyam Computer Services Ltd, the software provider at the center of India’s biggest corporate fraud inquiry, will announce the winning bid for the company on April 13, director Deepak Parekh said yesterday. Satyam’s state-appointed board is selling a 51 percent stake in the company to restore investor confidence and stem client and employee defections after founder Ramalinga Raju said on Jan. 7 that he had inflated US$1 billion in assets.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to