FINANCE
Nomura to raise salaries
Nomura Holdings Inc, Japan’s biggest brokerage, announced it is to raise salaries for about 4,000 staff in the country as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urges companies to help defeat deflation and sustain the economic recovery. Base pay at the Nomura Securities Co unit is to climb an average 2 percent starting in April next year, the Tokyo-based firm said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. The increases target younger employees, who are more likely to spend money and contribute to the world’s third-largest economy, it said. Nomura’s 2 percent pay increase is the same rate as the Bank of Japan’s target for inflation. The Bank of Japan unveiled a policy in April of doubling the monetary base in two years to achieve the goal. Regular wages excluding overtime and bonuses fell 0.6 percent in September from a year earlier, the 16th consecutive decline, labor ministry figures showed.
SOUTH KOREA
TPP talks closer: officials
The Asian trade powerhouse yesterday took a step closer to joining 12-nation talks aimed at slashing trade barriers between nations making up about 40 percent of the world economy. The world’s seventh-largest exporter said after a meeting of top economic officials that it would soon enter negotiations with the US, Japan, Canada and nine other nations already in the group. “[The government] expects participation in the TPP to help [the country] secure a big market spanning over the Asia-Pacific region and to allow competition with the other member countries on an equal footing,” it said in a statement. The negotiations, which have run for three years, have been mired in controversy over a lack of transparency and slowed by the conflicting interests of the negotiating countries, US lawmakers and advocacy groups.
GERMANY
Retail sales down again
Retail sales fell for the second consecutive month last month, official data showed yesterday. Retail sales slipped by 0.8 percent in price, calendar and seasonally adjusted terms last month compared with September, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement. Retail sales had already contracted by 0.2 percent in September. On a 12-month basis, too, business declined slightly for retailers, with sales showing a small decrease of 0.2 percent last month compared with the same month last year, the statisticians calculated.
PORTUGAL
Government plans IPO
The country is preparing for its first initial public offering (IPO) in more than five years as the nation recovers from 10 straight quarters of contraction that erased about 70 percent in market value. The government intends to sell 70 percent of CTT-Correios de Portugal SA next month, the first IPO since EDP-Energias de Portugal SA spun off its renewable-energy unit in June 2008. The PSI-20 Index has lost about 50 billion euros (US$68 billion) in market value since peaking in 2007 as index members dropped out and investors shunned a gauge composed of banks, utilities and construction companies stung by shrinking domestic demand. Portugal is counting on the offering to reduce debt and narrow its budget deficit as the third-most indebted member of the eurozone seeks to meet EU targets. The nation is planning to exit a rescue package in June.
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