European stocks posted their biggest weekly decline since June as concern that the latest round of bond buying in the US would fail to encourage growth offset speculation China might announce further stimulus measures.
Volkswagen AG led automakers lower after forecasting tougher business conditions for the second half. Fomento de Construccion & Contratas plunged 15 percent, pacing a drop in Spanish construction companies. Infineon Technologies AG slid after predicting sales and profitability would decline. Telekom Austria AG sank after cutting its dividend.
The STOXX Europe 600 fell 2.7 percent to 268.48 this week. Still, the benchmark measure was up 6.9 percent this quarter, as European Central Bank policymakers approved a plan to buy the bonds of the most-indebted members of the euro area. The index added 0.9 percent this month, for a fourth straight monthly gain.
“There are elements of political risk,” said Guillaume Duchesne, an equity strategist at BGL BNP Paribas SA in Luxembourg. “Fundamentals remain weak and there is still pressure on economic growth. We have a rather negative outlook.”
US Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia president Charles Plosser said on Tuesday that the Fed’s latest round of quantitative easing could jeopardize the central bank’s credibility. The Federal Open Market Committee said on Sept. 13 that it would buy mortgage-backed securities at a pace of US$40 billion per month until the labor market improves.
A report on Thursday showed China’s industrial profits fell for a fifth month last month, increasing speculation the government would do more to support economic growth. China may further cut banks’ reserve requirements or interest rates if external demand worsens, Chen Yulu, an academic adviser to the People’s Bank of China, told reporters in Beijing.
Spain’s Cabinet on Thursday approved the budget for next year, with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy vowing to cut the deficit by at least 18 billion euros (US$23.1 billion) , defying tens of thousands of demonstrators who fought with police in Madrid this week to demand Rajoy reverse course and resign.
National benchmark indexes slid in all of Europe’s 18 western markets. France’s CAC 40 Index dropped 5 percent, the UK’s FTSE 100 fell 1.9 percent and Germany’s DAX Index retreated 3.2 percent.
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
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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