INDUSTRY
US, Russia to revise deal
The US Department of Commerce on Friday said it had reached a draft agreement with the Russian government to revise a 13-year-old deal governing imports of hot-rolled steel. The pact raises the minimum price at which Russian hot-rolled steel can be sold in the US. The department launched the negotiations with Russia after US steel company Nucor Corp complained the 1999 agreement was out of date. Nucor and other interested parties will have a chance to comment on the deal before it is final. Those remarks are due to the Commerce Department by Friday. After a preliminary review of the 1999 “suspension agreement,” the department agreed earlier this year that prices for Russian hot-rolled steel were well below the US market.
FOOD
Twinkies maker set to fold
Hostess Brands Inc, the bankrupt maker of Twinkies snack cakes and Wonder Bread, is seeking a US court’s permission to go out of business after failing to get wage and benefit cuts from thousands of its striking bakery workers. The 82-year-old Hostess, which has about US$2.5 billion in sales and is one of the largest wholesale bakers and distributors of breads and snack cakes in the US, filed the request with the US Bankruptcy Court in New York early on Friday morning. A hearing on the matter is set for tomorrow. The Irving, Texas-based company said the liquidation would mean that most of its 18,500 employees would lose their jobs. Hostess immediately suspended operations at all of its 33 plants across the US as it moves to start selling assets. Entrepreneurs on auction site eBay Inc were asking as much as US$100 for a box of 10 Twinkies on Friday morning.
FINANCE
Cyprus’ rating to be cut
Rating firm Moody’s said on Friday it would review Cyprus for a possible downgrade, citing dragging bailout talks with international lenders on an aid package. Just five weeks after its last ratings cut, Moody’s said the review on Cyprus’ “B3” government bond rating was due to rising liquidity risks for the eurozone country, closely linked to debt-crippled Greece. “The slow pace of negotiations with the troika and the resulting uncertainty regarding the likelihood and timing of a support package which raises liquidity risks” was a key trigger for the review, Moody’s said in a statement. The second factor was signs that Cyprus’s budget deficit “will be significantly larger than expected.” The rating firm noted that Cyprus had requested a EU bailout in June, but negotiations only began this month.
INTERNET
US authorities sue eBay
US authorities sued online retail giant eBay on Friday, claiming it was part of a conspiracy with software maker Intuit to refrain from hiring each other’s employees to keep salaries under control. The civil antitrust lawsuit said eBay violated antitrust laws in an agreement not to recruit or hire Intuit employees, the US Justice Department said. The suit claims then-eBay chief executive Meg Whitman and Intuit founder Scott Cook agreed to the plan, which “deprived these employees of better job opportunities.” eBay denied any violations and pledged to contest the lawsuit.
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