Carrefour yesterday said it was pulling out of Singapore with the closure of its two existing outlets in the city-state by the end of this year.
The French retail giant was the first to introduce the hypermarket concept in Singapore with the opening of its first store in 1997.
TOUGH MARKET
However, Carrefour has found it tough to penetrate Singapore’s market of 5.2 million people largely because other rivals are better entrenched with a wider network of branches, many of them near public housing estates.
Carrefour’s two existing stores are located within distance of each other in the city-state’s main shopping and business district.
“Carrefour Singapore announces the decision to close its Suntec and Plaza Singapura stores before end of this year, since expansion and growth perspectives do not allow reaching a leadership position in the medium and long term,” the retailer said in a statement.
The decision to withdraw from Singapore is not a surprise, according to a senior executive with an Asian electronics company that is among Carrefour’s suppliers.
‘NOT COMPETITIVE’
“There was a lot of talk [of closing] from the internal staff and they have been clearing stock for the last two months,” said the executive, who declined to be named. “They were just not competitive enough.”
Carrefour, the world’s second-biggest retailer behind US group Walmart, reported in March that last year’s profit dropped by 14.3 percent to 371 million euros (US$463 million) amid weaker economic conditions.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
BARRIERS: Gudeng’s chairman said it was unlikely that the US could replicate Taiwan’s science parks in Arizona, given its strict immigration policies and cultural differences Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登), which supplies wafer pods to the world’s major semiconductor firms, yesterday said it is in no rush to set up production in the US due to high costs. The company supplies its customers through a warehouse in Arizona jointly operated by TSS Holdings Ltd (德鑫控股), a joint holding of Gudeng and 17 Taiwanese firms in the semiconductor supply chain, including specialty plastic compounds producer Nytex Composites Co (耐特) and automated material handling system supplier Symtek Automation Asia Co (迅得). While the company has long been exploring the feasibility of setting up production in the US to address
OPTION: Uber said it could provide higher pay for batch trips, if incentives for batching is not removed entirely, as the latter would force it to pass on the costs to consumers Uber Technologies Inc yesterday warned that proposed restrictions on batching orders and minimum wages could prompt a NT$20 delivery fee increase in Taiwan, as lower efficiency would drive up costs. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made the remarks yesterday during his visit to Taiwan. He is on a multileg trip to the region, which includes stops in South Korea and Japan. His visit coincided the release last month of the Ministry of Labor’s draft bill on the delivery sector, which aims to safeguard delivery workers’ rights and improve their welfare. The ministry set the minimum pay for local food delivery drivers at
RSS