JAPAN
Unemployment edges down
Unemployment fell slightly in June while households loosened their purse strings, offering a glimmer of hope for the nation’s fragile economy. Yesterday, official data showed that unemployment hit 4.3 percent in June, down from 4.4 percent in May and beating market forecasts that the jobless rate would remain unchanged, Dow Jones Newswires said. Separate data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications showed average household spending in June came in at ¥269,810 (US$3,450), up 1.6 percent from a year earlier, but lower than the 2.9 percent rise forecast by economists.
SOUTH KOREA
Industrial output tumbles
Industrial output fell month-on-month in June for the first time since March as the global slowdown took its toll on the export-led economy, figures showed yesterday. Production in manufacturing and mining declined a seasonally adjusted 0.4 percent from a month earlier following a revised 1.3 percent rise in May, Statistics Korea said. Year-on-year the June output figure was up 1.6 percent, compared to a revised 2.9 percent rise in May. The government last month cut its growth forecast for this year from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent, citing tougher conditions in overseas markets.
FRANCE
Household spending dips
Household spending fell by 0.2 percent in the second quarter of the year, but rose slightly in June, while new housing starts continued to fall sharply, official data showed yesterday. Household spending was up 0.1 percent in June following a 0.5 percent increase in May, the INSEE national statistics office said. Meanwhile, data published by the Ministry of Housing showed new housing starts were down 14 percent between April and June, after plummeting 19.9 percent between March and May.
INVESTMENT
Pyramid scheme probed
Prosecutors in Mannheim, Germany, said they have evidence that 1,295 investors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland lost at least US$37 million in a pyramid scheme allegedly run by a German man arrested in Las Vegas last week. “The actual damages are expected to be higher,” the Mannheim prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Monday. Ulrich Felix Anton Engler, 51, was arrested in Las Vegas on Wednesday last week for violating US immigration law.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Bayer’s Q2 earnings fall
Bayer AG says its second-quarter earnings were a third lower than last year because of one-time charges that included money set aside to deal with litigation linked to a contraceptive, but its revenues rose 10 percent and the company raised its full-year outlook. The pharmaceutical and chemical company yesterday reported net earnings of 494 million euros (US$606 million) for April to June — down from 747 million euros a year earlier. Revenues climbed to 10.18 billion euros from 9.25 billion euros.
OIL
BP records big Q2 loss
British energy giant BP said yesterday that it plunged into a net loss in the second quarter of this year, hit by lower oil prices and a huge impairment charge. BP made a loss after taxation of US$1.385 billion in the three months to the end of June, it said in a results statement. That compared with a net profit of US$5.915 billion in the same period of last year.
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