MACROECONOMICS
Swiss GDP flat in Q2
Growth in Switzerland has ground to a halt, official data showed on Tuesday. GDP stagnated in the April-June quarter, with zero growth from the previous quarter, according to statistics from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. While the economy inched up 0.6 percent on an annual basis, the numbers fell far short of the expectations of economists polled by financial agency AWP, who had anticipated seeing quarterly growth of between 0.3 and 0.9 percent, and as much as 2.1 percent from last year.
AIRLINES
ANA, Lufthansa team up
Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Lufthansa of Germany yesterday announced an air cargo tie-up as they look to fight off intense competition from budget airlines on passenger routes. The airlines said they had won regulatory approval for the agreement, which would see them integrate network planning, pricing, sales and handling on all routes between Japan and Europe. The Japanese carrier holds a 17 percent market share for air freight between Japan and Europe, while Lufthansa has 16 percent, a report in the Nikkei Shimbun said yesterday.
TECHNOLOGY
Google, UCSB plan project
Google Inc said a research team led by physicist John Martinis from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is set to join the company to start a project to build new quantum information processors based on superconducting electronics. The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab is a collaboration between Google, NASA Ames Research Center and the Universities Space Research Association to study the application of quantum optimization related to artificial intelligence.
SHIPPING
Norwegian to buy Prestige
Norwegian Cruise Line on Tuesday announced plans to acquire Prestige Cruise International for US$3 billion as it seeks to expand its offerings to the upscale vacation market. Norwegian, which owns 13 ships, said the deal would add Prestige’s upscale and luxury cruise brands, known as Oceania and Regent to its offerings. Prestige’s eight vessels are mostly smaller ships that take long voyages of up to six months.
CHINA
McDonald’s to boost checks
McDonald’s said it would monitor its suppliers in China more closely after a food-safety scandal in the country hurt the hamburger chain’s sales and reputation. The company said on Tuesday it plans to increase audits and video monitoring at its suppliers, and send more employees to meat production facilities to ensure its food is prepared safely. It also named a new food safety officer and created a hotline where employees can report poor food-safety practices.
INSURANCE
China finds 23 firms guilty
A total of 23 Chinese insurance firms colluded to fix fees, authorities said on Tuesday, fining them a total of US$18 million. The companies negotiated and agreed on unified commissions from auto insurance premiums through meetings organized by the Zhejiang Insurance Association, China’s National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement. The agency fined 22 of the insurers a combined 110 million yuan (US$18 million), the statement said. The penalized firms include branches of China Life Insurance Co (中國人壽) and Ping An Insurance Group (平安保險).
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
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
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