MACROECONOMICS
Economy picking up: BOJ
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) yesterday said the economy was “picking up” and held off ramping up April’s huge stimulus scheme, but warned of possible headwinds caused by uncertainty in Europe and the US. “Japan’s economy been picking up,” the bank said in a statement, adding that capital spending by companies “appears to have stopped weakening on the whole.” The bank repeated its determination to press on with the aggressive monetary easing for “as long as it is necessary.”
AUTOMAKERS
Indian car sales dip 12%
Car sales in India slid more than 12 percent last month from a year earlier, data showed yesterday, the seventh consecutive month of decline. Domestic passenger car sales, seen as an indicator of overall economic health, fell 12.26 percent to 143,216 last month from a year earlier. The weak demand has forced automakers to introduce “buy now, pay later” schemes, interest-free repayments and double-digit discounts.
AIRLINES
AirAsia, ANA may break up
Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia yesterday said it was considering ending its near two-year tie-up with Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA), blaming management tensions. Asia’s biggest budget airline said that AirAsia Japan had been “facing some challenges attributed to a difference of opinion in management, most critically on the points of how to operate a low-cost business.” “The problem is not with the model, it’s with management,” AirAsia chief Tony Fernandes told the Wall Street Journal.
CONGLOMERATES
Siemens to lay off 1,000
German engineering giant Siemens plans to cut 1,000 more domestic jobs at its energy division over the next few years, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported yesterday. The company plans to initially cut 340 jobs in its energy-solutions unit in Erlangen and Offenbach, the daily newspaper said. Siemens then plans to scrap another 650 jobs at those sites, while it creates new ones in South Korea, strengthening its position in Asia. The conglomerate had already announced in December that it intended to slash 1,100 jobs in its energy division in Germany.
BANKING
Banker took costly nap
A tired German bank employee fell asleep on his keyboard and accidentally transformed a minor transfer into a 222 million euro (US$293 million) order, a court heard on Monday. The Hessen labor court heard that the man was supposed to transfer just 62.40 euros from a bank account belonging to a retiree, but instead “fell asleep for an instant, while pushing onto the number 2 key on the keyboard” — making it a huge 222,222,222.22 euro order. The bank discovered the mistake shortly afterwards and corrected the error. The court ruled that the plaintiff should be reinstated in his job.
FASHION
Lululemon CEO resigns
Lululemon, the yoga clothing firm that made headlines earlier this year for its see-through pants mixup, said on Monday that CEO Christine Day would step down as head of the company after a successor is named. The Canadian firm made the announcement as it reported a slight increase in fiscal first-quarter profit on higher revenue. Lululemon added that it plans to delist from the Toronto Stock Exchange on June 24. It will continue to trade on the NASDAQ.
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