Australia
Bank likely to cut interest
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will probably cut interest rates by 25 basis points when it meets this week as consumer spending slows and housing-loan growth stagnates, according to newspaper columnist Terry McCrann. A reduction by the central bank is “very likely, indeed almost certain,” McCrann wrote in his column published yesterday in Melbourne’s Herald Sun. The lending rate is 3.5 percent. Traders are pricing in an 85 percent chance RBA will end a three-month pause and cut rates by a quarter percentage point to 3.25 percent at tomorrow’s policy meeting, while a majority of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News predict a pause for another month.
Automakers
GM recalls 40,000 cars
General Motors Co (GM) is recalling more than 40,000 cars sold in warm-weather US states because a plastic part might crack and cause a fuel leak. The company is recalling Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5 sedans from the 2007 through 2009 model years and Chevrolet Equinox and Pontiac Torrent SUVs and Saturn Ion sedans from the 2007 model year. The vehicles have plastic parts connected to the fuel pump which could crack. If the crack gets large enough, fuel could leak out of the vehicle and cause a fire.
CHINA
38 deported from Ghana
Beijing says 38 of its citizens have been arrested and deported after being caught allegedly mining gold illegally in the west African country of Ghana. A statement seen yesterday on the Web site of the Chinese embassy in Ghana says 40 Chinese citizens were recently detained in Obuasi district. It says investigations by security authorities in Ghana found one person not guilty, while another was released on bail. It says the remaining 38 Chinese were deported because they had no residence or work permit or license to mine. It was unclear whether they had been prosecuted.
INTERNET
Google trims features
Google trimmed news “badges” and more as part of year-long house cleaning aimed at sweeping out unpopular, outdated or unneeded features at its online properties. Features being eliminated included AdSense for Feeds, which let Web site publishers earn revenue by placing ads in RSS feeds, and Classic Plus, which allowed users to upload images to use as backgrounds at Google.com. Google will consolidate online storage of data in Picasa and Drive, giving users 5 gigabytes of memory space for free overall for both services and options to pay for more capacity. On Oct. 15, the company is to stop displaying “Badges” awarded for story-reading achievements at its online news pages and no longer show recommended sections.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Investors keen on property
Properties in Southeast Asian cities including Bangkok, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur are attractive for investors seeking to boost returns by holding riskier assets, Deutsche Bank AG’s RREEF unit said. Retail real estate, such as supermarkets, convenience stores and logistics facilities, which include warehouses that focus on e-commerce, offer opportunities. Office markets in Sydney and Melbourne also are attractive because of a lack of supply, it said. The asset manager is “cautiously optimistic” on the Singapore office market. It said it does not expect a fully fledged correction in rents because supply of new office space remains limited.
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