PHARMACEUTICALS
Drug approvals suspended
Germany’s Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices is suspending the marketing approval of some generic drugs due to concerns over the quality of data from clinical trials conducted by India’s GVK Biosciences. The quality of Indian pharmaceuticals has come under fire this year, with regulators in Europe and the US citing problems ranging from data manipulation to sanitation and banning the import of certain products from several firms. Germany’s drug regulator said on Friday it was investigating drug approvals based on clinical trials meant to show that the generic drugs were equivalent to the original branded versions conducted by GVK between 2008 and this year.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Theft charges dropped
Two former Eli Lilly and Co employees who were accused of sending trade secrets worth more than US$55 million to a competing Chinese drug company no longer face charges, the US attorney’s office announced on Friday. The case against Guoqing Cao (曹國興) and Shuyu Li (李舒裕) collapsed after Lilly provided additional information to the US Department of Justice that changed “the investigative facts initially relied upon by the government” in its case, according to court documents. Cao and Li were arrested on Oct. 1 last year and charged with theft and conspiracy to commit theft involving drugs that Lilly was developing for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.
INTERNET
France to block Pirate Bay
A French court has ordered the country’s main Internet service providers to block notorious file-sharing Web site The Pirate Bay, according to a ruling published on Friday on digital news Web site Numerama. The antipiracy ruling orders Orange, Bouygues Telecom, Free and SFR to block access to the site from France as well as about 20 mirror Web sites and 50 proxy servers that allow users not to be traced. The companies have 15 days to block access to the sites.
RETAIL
Amazon launches diapers
Online retailing giant Amazon.com Inc launched its own brand of diapers on Thursday, opening a new front in retail battles with a direct challenge to name-brand vendors already selling on its Web site. Amazon said the first offerings in its new Amazon Elements line of consumer products would be diapers and baby wipes, and that other competitively priced, “premium” everyday consumer products would soon follow. However, the Elements line is available only to members of Amazon’s Prime US$99-a-year subscription club, with the lowest prices available for those who are also members of its Amazon Mom group.
HOTELS
Bids heat up for Club Med
The bidding war for French holiday group Club Med heated up on Friday as Italian businessman Andrea Bonomi’s Global Resorts said it raised its offer to counter the takeover ambitions of Chinese rival Fosun International (復星). Bonomi’s group has offered 24 euros per share, valuing Club Med at 915 million euros (US$1.125 billion) in the takeover competition that began more than 18 months ago. Fosun’s latest bid, joined by Brazilian investor Nelson Tanure, on Monday was 23.50 euros per share, valuing the holiday group at 890 million euros.
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