FRANCE
S&P cuts rating to ‘AA’
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) cut France’s sovereign credit rating on Friday by one notch to “AA” from “AA+,” giving a thumbs-down to French President Francois Hollande’s efforts to put the economy back on track. All three major rating agencies had already stripped the country of its top-grade “triple-A” status. S&P is the first agency to downgrade the status for a second time, warning that the economic reforms of the past year were not sufficient to lift growth. The ratings agency adjusted its outlook for national debt to stable from negative, citing Hollande’s commitment to containing net general debt, which it expects to peak at 86 percent of output in 2015.
GERMANY
Trade surplus grows
The national trade surplus expanded in September as imports fell and exports grew, rising to 18.9 billion euros (US$25.4 billion) in September from 15.8 billion in August, data published by the German Federal Statistics Office yesterday showed. In seasonally adjusted terms, the country exported goods worth 92.8 billion euros in September, up from 91.2 billion euros in August, the office said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Economy gains after crisis
The economy expanded at a 2.8 percent annual rate from July through September, a surprising acceleration ahead of the 16-day partial government shutdown and compared with a 2.5 percent annual rate in the April-to-June period, the US Department of Commerce said on Thursday. Analysts say the shutdown could cut more than half a percentage point from annual growth in the fourth quarter. The shutdown cost the economy an estimated US$24 billion, according to Beth Ann Bovino, an economist at Standard & Poor’s.
EUROZONE
ECB cuts interest rates
The European Central Bank (ECB) cut its key interest rates in an unexpected move on Thursday amid concerns that slowing inflation in the eurozone could turn into a vicious cycle of falling prices. The bank took financial markets by surprise by cutting its central “refi” or refinancing rate, by a quarter of a percentage point to a new record low of 0.25 percent. The move comes after new data showed eurozone inflation slowing to a four-year low of 0.7 percent last month.
ELECTRONICS
Sony hires strategy officer
Sony Corp replaced its chief strategy officer a week after cutting forecasts and reporting a surprise loss that triggered a plunge in its share price. Kenichiro Yoshida will replace Tadashi Saito as chief strategy officer, according to a company statement. Saito was appointed by Sony president Kazuo Hirai in April last year to help lead a turnaround after the company lost US$8 billion on its television business over the past nine years.
E-COMMERCE
Groupon mobile move a hit
Groupon Inc said more people are flocking to deals offered on mobile devices as the company transforms itself into a service offering thousands of discounts instead of a daily deal. The company, which said on Wednesday that it agreed to buy Ticket Monster Inc in South Korea for US$260 million in cash and stock, reported that sales rose 4.7 percent to US$595.1 million in the third quarter and a net loss of US$2.58 million. Groupon forecast fourth-quarter revenue of between US$690 million and US$740 million and operating income of between US$40 million and US$60 million.
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