GREECE
Sale of state land urged
President Karolos Papoulias said selling and exploiting state land could alleviate the country’s debt burden, urging the government to move ahead with state asset sales amid public opposition. “We have foisted an unbearable debt on the backs of our children and are obliged to proceed to specific initiatives now,” Papoulias said in a speech on Sunday, according to an e-mailed transcript from his office. Comments by EU and IMF officials in Athens on Feb. 11 that Greece could raise as much as 50 billion euros (US$67 billion) by 2015 in state asset sales to reduce debt have caused an outcry amid media claims the country will sell beaches and other assets. The figure, higher than a previous government estimate of 7 billion euros over three years, has led Prime Minister George Papandreou to say he will propose a law to prohibit the disposal of state-owned land.
GERMANY
Business index hits record
Business confidence unexpectedly rose to a fresh record high this month as booming exports spurred hiring and consumer spending. The Munich-based Ifo Institute said its business climate index, based on a survey of 7,000 executives, increased to 111.2 from 110.3 last month. That’s the highest since records for a reunified Germany began in 1991. The economy is driving eurozone growth after demand from faster-growing economies such as China boosted exports and helped push unemployment to the lowest in almost two decades. The government expects Europe’s largest economy to expand 2.3 percent this year after record growth of 3.6 percent last year.
BEVERAGES
Diageo to buy raki maker
Diageo PLC, the world’s biggest spirits maker, yesterday agreed to buy the Turkish spirits group Mey Icki for £1.3 billion (US$2.1 billion) to give it access to this fast-growing emerging market. The London-based maker of Johnnie Walker whisky and Smirnoff vodka is buying Turkey’s biggest spirits company from investment firms TPG Capital LP and Actera. The deal is expected to be completed in the second half of this year. The Turkish group is the clear market leader in raki, the biggest spirits category in Turkey, and has a leading position in vodka, while it also has an extensive nationwide sales and distribution network. It had net annual sales of £300 million last year and earnings before interest and tax of 120 million pounds, and will be earnings accretive for Diageo in the first full year of acquisition by about 1 percent.
COMMODITIES
Sumatra coffee lull may stay
Coffee-bean exports from Indonesia’s main growing regions in Sumatra, which plunged 23 percent last year as La Nina rains hurt output, may fail to rebound this year as the weather event lingers, according to a trade group. Constrained exports from Indonesia, the third-largest producer after Brazil and Vietnam, may tighten global supplies and help to extend a rally in robusta, the bitter-tasting variety used in instant drinks. Higher coffee prices may contribute to further gains in record global food costs. May-delivery robusta rose as much as 2.3 percent to US$2,358 a tonne on the LIFFE exchange in London on Friday last week, the highest intraday price since July 2008. The price in Lampung rose to about 18,500 rupiah (US$2.09) a kilogram last week compared with 16,000 rupiah at the end of December, said Muchtar Luthfie, head of research and development at the Lampung branch of the Association of Indonesian Coffee Exporters and Industries.
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