GERMANY
November exports strong
The Federal Statistical Office said exports rose strongly in November last year, partially offsetting a sharp drop the previous month, according to provisional figures. The agency said yesterday that exports rose 2.5 percent to 90.7 billion euros (US$115.88 billion) in November, adjusted for seasonal and calendar factors, while imports dropped 0.4 percent to 75.7 billion euros. The rise comes after the office reported a revised 2.9 percent drop in exports to 88.5 billion euros in October. Compared with a year earlier, exports in November were up 8.3 percent in unadjusted terms.
PETROLEUM
Statoil finds oil in Barents
Norway’s Statoil yesterday announced a major oil discovery in the Barents Sea that could contain up to 300 million barrels of crude. The Havis prospect is the twin of Skrugard, another deposit Statoil discovered in April last year, confirming the potential of the waters as yet untapped in the Barents Sea. Together, the two deposits could contain between 400 and 600 million barrels of oil equivalent, Statoil said in a statement.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Novartis recalls US drugs
Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis said on Sunday it was recalling four different products sold over the counter in the US over reports of a malfunction at one of its plants. The affected drugs are Excedrin, NoDoz, Bufferin and Gas-X Prevention, Novartis Consumer Health said in a statement. However, the group stressed that it was not aware of adverse effects among the affected products’ consumers. The plant in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the products are manufactured, was shut down last month and Novartis said improvements were being carried out there.
CANADA
Q4 consumer confidence up
Consumer confidence rose in the fourth quarter from a two-year low on optimism about real-estate prices and the global economy according to a Nanos Research poll. The Nanos Economic Mood Index rose to 107.4 in the fourth quarter from 105.1 the prior three months, according to a report by Nik Nanos, president of the Ottawa-based polling company. About 19 percent of those surveyed said the economy will be stronger in the next six months, up from 16 percent, while the share who said it would be weaker declined to 31 percent from 39 percent.
AUTOMAKERS
Cab maker misses profit
Manganese Bronze, the maker of London’s traditional black cabs, said it had failed to make a profit last year and could miss market expectations for this year, blaming deteriorating economic conditions and the delay of an Azerbaijan order. The company said trading had continued to be impacted by the weakening UK economy, while the unresolved eurozone sovereign debt crisis and its potential impact on banks had undermined confidence within the global banking community and made it more difficult to secure finance for international trade.
AIRLINES
Air-France-KLM load up
Air France-KLM Group said passenger traffic rose 7 percent last year, spurred by gains on European and transatlantic routes. The airline lifted capacity 6.5 percent, so that its load factor, a measure of seat occupancy, advanced 0.4 percentage points to 83 percent. The Franco-Dutch carrier’s passenger total increased 7.8 percent to 59.5 million, it said in a statement.
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