GREECE
EU worried by resignation
The European Commission on Thursday expressed “serious concern” after Greece’s powerful public revenues chief — a position created in 2012 at the insistence of bailout creditors — resigned citing “personal” reasons. The Finance Ministry said it had accepted the resignation of Harry Theoharis. EU Commission spokesman Simon O’Connor said Theoharis had played a “key role” in improving Athen’s troubled public finances. His resignation came before a planned Cabinet reshuffle, expected within days, following the conservative-led coalition government’s weak showing in European parliamentary elections last month.
ECONOMY
UK housing prices worrying
Britain must be alert to rising house prices and indebtedness, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said yesterday, hours before the release of an IMF report that is likely to raise concerns about this. British house prices are rising at their fastest rate since the eve of the financial crisis, and in April Osborne said it was necessary to keep a close eye on the market. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has since called the housing market the greatest domestic risk at present to Britain’s financial stability. The bank’s Financial Policy Committee will publish its half-yearly stability report later this month. It may take further steps to require lenders to set aside more capital against certain types of home loans, and to assess borrowers’ ability to repay mortgages more stringently.
MANUFACTURING
German output edges up
German industrial production edged up by a smaller-than-expected 0.2 percent in April, below economists’ expectations of a rise by 0.3 percent or more compared with the previous month. Official data released yesterday also showed that exports rose 3 percent on the month after declining for two months, while imports edged up 0.1 percent. That pushed Germany’s trade surplus up to 17.7 billion euros (US$24.1 billion) from 14.8 billion euros in March. Germany’s economy grew by a robust 0.8 percent in the first quarter compared with the previous three-month period. The Bundesbank forecast that GDP will grow by 1.9 percent this year, 2 percent next year and 1.8 percent in 2016.
AUSTRALIA
S&P’s liability upheld
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) was found liable yesterday for investment losses incurred by Australian councils in the lead-up to the global financial crisis, after a court dismissed its appeal against a landmark 2012 ruling. The full bench of the Federal Court of Australia threw out the appeal by the ratings agency, ABN Amro Bank and the firm Local Government Financial Services and upheld the original judgement. The court ruled that the three companies were 100 percent liable for losses sustained by the councils of 13 towns rather than 33 percent in the earlier judgement.
BANKING
Swiss banks get extension
The US Department of Justice on Thursday extended for one month the deadline for so-called category two Swiss banks suspected of helping wealthy Americans evade taxes to turn over information by one month. More than 100 banks that have a reason to believe they may have committed tax offences, defined as category two banks, have signed up to the program. They are eligible for a non-prosecution agreement if they come clean and face fines. The banks now have until July 31 to turn over the necessary information.
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