GREECE
Privatization chief elected
The government on Monday appointed its third chief of privatization in a less than a year as it struggled to speed up delayed state asset sales to meet bailout goals. Stelios Stavridis, who heads EYDAP, the nation’s main water provider, was brought in to spearhead a lagging push to raise 2.6 billion euros (US$3.5 billion) in asset sales this year. The last privatization head resigned on Saturday amid an investigation into his previous position as head of public utility PPC.
GERMANY
Inflation at two-year low
Inflation in Europe’s biggest economy slowed to its lowest level in more than two years last month, official data showed yesterday. The cost of living in the country increased by 1.5 percent on a 12-month basis this month, down from 1.7 percent in January, data from federal statistics office Destatis showed. On a monthly basis, the consumer price index rose by 0.6 percent last month from January.
INDIA
Output beats forecasts
The nation’s industrial output grew by a better-than-expected 2.4 percent in January from a year earlier, data showed yesterday. The rise in January output at factories, mines and utilities beat analysts’ expectations of a 1 percent increase compiled by a Dow Jones Newswires poll, after a surprise 0.6 percent drop in December last year.
ELECTRONICS
UK probes scam on HP
Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) says British authorities have opened an investigation into allegations that the company was duped when it bought business software maker Autonomy. The inquiry disclosed in a Monday regulatory filing is the latest legal fallout from a deal that has saddled HP with massive losses and depressed its stock price. HP bought UK-based Autonomy for about US$10 billion in 2011 and last year wrote off US$8.8 billion of that amount.
ENERGY
Largest biogas plant opens
Finland inaugurated the world’s largest biogas plant on Monday as the country seeks to limit its use of foreign coal. Built near a coal-fired power plant in Vaasa, central Finland, the 140-megawatt biomass gasification factory is expected to cut coal use by up to 40 percent. Fueled mainly with wood residue from Finland’s forestry sector, the plant is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 230,000 tonnes a year while providing heat and electricity for Vaasa.
TECHNOLOGY
Dassault CEO mulls tax exile
Bernard Charles, chief executive of the French high-tech group Dassault Systemes, is mulling leaving his native France for tax reasons, a center-left daily newspaper said on Monday. In an interview published in Le Monde, Charles said that although the thought of going into tax exile was maturing and he was considering it “in all its aspects,” he had not made a decision yet. “My concern is the heavy taxing on capital, stock options and free shares,” he was quoted by the paper as saying.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Yum Brands gets boost
KFC parent Yum Brands Inc reported an unexpected 2 percent rise in sales last month at its restaurants in China, boosted by the Lunar New Year holiday and easing worries about a food safety scare that drove away customers. Yum on Monday said first-quarter restaurant sales in China fell 20 percent, below its 25 percent forecast.
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