AUTOMAKERS
Volkswagen invests
Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest automaker, is seeking to build a 10 billion yuan factory (US$1.6 billion) in China that may boost the company’s production capacity by more than 10 percent, state-affiliated bodies said. The Hunan Research Academy of Environmental Sciences is seeking public feedback on the plant, which will be located in the southeastern Chinese city of Changsha and have a capacity to build 300,000 passenger vehicles a year, the state-backed organization said on its Web site. Investments in the factory may total 10 billion yuan, the Changsha National Economic & Technical Development Zone said on its Web site.
AUTOMAKERS
Toyota cuts output target
Toyota Motor is cutting its target of producing more than 10 million vehicles this year after suffering a sales drop in key market China amid strained Sino-Japanese ties, a report said yesterday. Japan’s biggest automaker had aimed to top the 10 million mark in what would have been a first for the company, saying earlier this year that it expected global output to hit 10.05 million vehicles this year. Toyota’s annual global production was now likely to be between 9.8 and 9.9 million units this year, the leading Nikkei business daily reported, citing unnamed company officials.
FRANCE
Industrial sentiment falls
Industrial sentiment fell to a three-year low this month as order books thinned and manufacturers’ outlook for the future darkened, the national statistics institute INSEE said yesterday. The composite industrial sentiment index dropped five points from last month to 85 points this month, moving further from its long-term average of 100 points. The composite business sentiment indicator, which also includes services, construction and wholesale and retail sales, dropped by one point over the month to also hit 85 points.
RETAIL
Esprit plans share sale
Clothing retailer Esprit plans to raise up to US$677 million in a new share sale to rebuild its brand as part of a multibillion-dollar four-year transformation drive, a report said yesterday. Up to 655.8 million shares will be sold at a price of HK$8 (US$1.03) each, a 36 percent discount from Monday’s close of HK$12.44, Dow Jones Newswires said.
shipping
FedEx to hire workers
FedEx Corp said on Monday it would hire 20,000 temporary workers to help handle surging shipments during the year-end holiday season. FedEx predicted its biggest day of the year would be Dec. 10, when they expect to handle a record 19 million shipments, up 10 percent from a year ago, driven by online orders. For the overall holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, FedEx forecasted it would handle more than 280 million shipments worldwide, 13 percent more than in the same period last year.
credit ratings
Dagong to form group
Chinese ratings agency Dagong (大公) said yesterday it was tying up with US and Russian partners to form a new “independent” group to rival US-based agencies it claims have “proven inadequate.” The firm will set up the joint venture, called Universal Credit Rating Group, with Egan-Jones Ratings Co, based in Pennsylvania, and Russia’s RusRating JSC, it said in an invitation for a press conference today to unveil the new company.
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