European stocks posted their biggest weekly gain since St Valentine’s Day as concern dissipated that the Ukraine crisis would lead to wide-ranging disruption to trade after a speech from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG rose 12 percent after projecting that pretax profit would climb by at least a high single-digit percentage this year. Legal & General Group PLC slumped 9.6 percent as British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne scrapped rules forcing people to buy annuities with their pension funds.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index rose 1.8 percent to 327.91 this week, paring its decline for the year to 0.1 percent, as Putin used an address to Russian lawmakers to allay concern that he would send troops into eastern Ukraine. The benchmark fell 4.7 percent in the first two weeks of the month, as the newly appointed prime minister of Crimea called a referendum to determine whether the region would leave Ukraine and join Russia.
“The absence of further escalation of the geopolitical crisis in Eastern Europe, and no signs of significant economic sanctions against Russia from Europe or the US fueled a sense of relief in the markets this week,” Witold Bahrke, a senior strategist at PFA Asset Management in Copenhagen, wrote in an e-mail.
Russia annexed Crimea after almost 97 percent of voters in a plebiscite on March 16 backed the region’s secession from Ukraine. The US and the EU imposed sanctions on Russian and Crimean officials, and threatened further measures.
European stocks slid briefly after US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said that US interest rates could increase six months after the central bank’s monthly bond purchases come to an end.
“The Fed meeting didn’t make more than a small dent, since markets chose to interpret the relative hawkishness as a sign of confidence in the US recovery rather than a potential policy mistake,” Bahrke said.
A gauge of US industrial production released on Monday rose a higher-than-expected 0.6 percent last month, following a revised 0.2 percent decline in January.
Benchmark indices climbed in every Western European market except Denmark and Iceland this week. Germany’s DAX gained 3.2 percent, the UK’s FTSE 100 rose 0.4 percent and France’s CAC 40 rallied 2.8 percent.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six