AUTOMAKERS
Honda recalls 936,000 cars
Japan’s Honda Motor is recalling 936,000 cars worldwide, mostly its popular Fit subcompact, called Jazz in some countries, because of defective power window switches, the company said yesterday. In the worst-case scenario, the switch could partially melt and its cover could catch fire, although no one has been injured because of the defect, a company spokeswoman said. The automaker will recall 216,193 units of its Fit and other models in Japan. Another 255,766 vehicles are being recalled in China, 297,000 elsewhere in Asia, and 103,000 units in North America. Models subject to the global recall also include the City car and CR-V sport utility vehicle, Honda said.
INDIA
Services industry slows
India’s services industry grew at the slowest pace in more than two years last month after the central bank’s record interest-rate increases and a weakening global economy restrained consumer demand. The Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 53.8 last month from 58.2 in July, HSBC Holdings PLC and Markit Economics said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. That is the lowest level since June 2009. A reading above 50 indicates an expansion.
ECONOMY
Finland GDP up 0.6 percent
Finland’s economy grew less than economists expected in the second quarter as Europe’s deepening debt crisis hurt sentiment among consumers and businesses. GDP adjusted for seasonal variations grew 0.6 percent from the prior three months, when it grew a revised 0.3 percent, Helsinki-based Statistics Finland said on its Web site yesterday. The EU statistics office in Luxembourg said on Aug. 16 that Finland’s second-quarter growth was 1.2 percent.
FARMING
Confidence falls in Australia
Rural confidence in Australia, the third-largest wheat exporter, dropped to the lowest level in more than two years amid global economic turmoil and concerns about domestic government policies, Rabobank International said. A survey completed about a month ago found the number of farmers expecting conditions to worsen in the coming year increased to 35 percent from 12 percent in the previous quarter, Rabobank’s Australian unit said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. It also showed that 18 percent of farmers expected conditions to improve in the coming year, down from 42 percent last quarter.
INDONESIA
Inflation up on food demand
Inflation accelerated last month for the first time in seven months as demand for food rose ahead of the Eid al-Fitr celebration in the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. Consumer prices rose 4.79 percent last month from a year earlier, the Central Bureau of Statistics said yesterday. That compares with an inflation rate of 4.61 percent in July.
BANKING
Paper warns on ring-fencing
Plans by a government--appointed commission to get the Britain’s top banks to ring-fence their retail operations from riskier trading activities could hit the nation’s overall economy, Ernst & Young said in a research note yesterday. A report by the Ernst & Young ITEM club said the Independent Commission on Banking’s proposals could impact the economy by some 0.3 percent. The commission, set up last year to examine reforming Britain’s banking industry, will publish its final report on Monday.
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