AUSTRALIA
Unemployment falls
Unemployment hit a near two-and-a-half-year low last month, sending the national currency to a new record high. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said seasonally adjusted unemployment fell 0.1 percentage points last month to 4.9 percent, with an extra 37,800 jobs created. The figures mean 11.457 million people were in work last month, exceeding forecasts. It is the lowest jobless rate seen in the country since December 2008, when the global crisis was just starting to take hold.
MINING
Rio closes in on Riversdale
Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto says it has achieved its goal of gaining a 47 percent stake in Riversdale Mining, and has come close to taking a majority stake. Rio said yesterday that it had secured 49.53 percent of the shares by Wednesday, the original deadline for shareholders to accept a sweetened offer of A$16.50 (US$17.25) per share, up from AS$16.00. Rio Tinto had set the 47 percent target on March 29, when it declared the offer unconditional. The company has now extended the higher offer until April 20. Rio Tinto’s holdings now exceed the combined stake of India’s Tata Steel and Brazil’s CSN, which increased their holdings after Rio first announced its US$4 billion offer.
BANKING
BOM president questioned
Russian police investigators on Wednesday summoned the president of the powerful Bank of Moscow (BOM) for questioning in a probe into a fraudulent loan, RIA Novosti news agency reported. The bank chief, Andrei Borodin, was on Tuesday reported by Russian news agencies to have fled the country in fear of a criminal prosecution in the probe into a fraudulent US$415 million loan, quoting sources in banking circles. The Bank of Moscow was created by the previous Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, who was sacked in September, and became the country’s fifth largest bank after gaining Russia’s wealthiest city as a client.
AUTOMOBILES
Saab keeps workers at home
Saab Automobile, the Swedish carmaker owned by Spyker Cars NV, said it has told factory workers to stay home today and tomorrow as production continues to be halted amid discussions with suppliers over payment and delivery terms. “We are very optimistic production will resume early next week,” Saab spokesman Eric Geers said yesterday by telephone. Saab is looking for short-term funding to boost its limited cash reserves so it can pay suppliers and is in talks with several potential investors about more long-term funding solutions, Geers said.
DISNEY
HK expansion speeded up
Hong Kong Disneyland, which has been struggling to attract visitors since opening in 2005, said yesterday that it would complete the first phase of its expansion by 2013, a year early. The loss-making park has been seeking to increase its popularity and faces fresh concerns over its future with Shanghai Disneyland reportedly set to start construction today. The HK$3.63 billion (US$467 million) expansion, which will see the addition of three attractions, will now be completed by 2013, the theme park said in a statement yesterday. It said “Toy Story Land,” based on the popular animated film, would open later this year while two other attractions would open next year and 2013.
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