UNITED STATES
Jobless rate to stay high
The nation’s jobless rate is unlikely to reach more normal levels for several years, US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday as he again defended the central bank’s forceful easing of monetary policy. One lawmaker asked Bernanke when the economy might produce enough jobs to bring the unemployment rate, currently at 7.9 percent, down to 6 percent — the top of the Fed’s long-term forecast range. “A reasonable guess for 6 percent would be around 2016, about three more years,” Bernanke told the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.
SOUTH KOREA
Industrial output shrinks
Industrial output shrank for the first time in five months in January, official figures showed yesterday, dampening hopes for a robust recovery for Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Production in the mining, manufacturing, gas and electricity industries shrank a seasonally adjusted 1.5 percent compared with December last year, marking the first monthly fall since August, state-run Statistics Korea said. Compared with a year earlier, January’s reading was up 7.3 percent, compared with a revised 0.5 percent decline in December.
JAPAN
Manufacturing picks up
The nation’s manufacturing showed signs of recovery in January, with industrial production up 1 percent from the month before, but down 5.1 percent from a year earlier. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said yesterday that the figures, the second straight monthly increase, suggested the slump in output had “bottomed out.” However January’s figure was below economists’ forecasts for a 1.5 percent month-on-month increase. Industrial output rose a seasonally adjusted 2.5 percent in December last year from November.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Mylan set to buy Agila
US generic drugs specialist Mylan Inc said yesterday it would buy a unit of Indian pharma firm Strides Arcolab for US$1.6 billion, boosting its presence in the high-growth injectable drugs market. Pennsylvania-based Mylan said the all-cash buyout of Agila Specialities, which makes injectables, is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of the year subject to regulatory approvals. The sale of Bangalore-based Agila ends months of speculation.
FINANCE
Australian dollar overvalued
The Reserve Bank of Australia said the country’s currency is held by as many as 34 central banks from Reykjavik to Santiago, and models suggested the Australian dollar was as much as 15 percent overvalued, documents showed. The central banks of Slovakia and Slovenia were recent additions to a list of 16 economies that publicly hold the Australian currency, according to papers prepared in the second half of last year and released yesterday under a Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg News.
FINANCE
RBS’ losses almost tripled
British state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) said yesterday that net losses almost tripled to £5.97 billion (US$9.05 billion) last year, when it was hit by compensation payouts and a London interbank offered rate (LIBOR) fine. The vast loss after taxation compared with a shortfall of £1.997 billion in 2011, the lender announced in a results statement, adding that last year had been a “chastening” year during which it sought to “put right past mistakes.”
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