EMPLOYMENT
S Korea jobless rate at high
South Korea’s jobless rate rose to a five-year high last month as more college graduates and cash-strapped retirees flooded the increasingly tight job market, state data showed yesterday. The jobless rate of 4.6 percent last month — up from 3.8 percent in January and 4.5 percent a year ago — was the highest since February 2010, according to state-run Statistics Korea. The seasonally adjusted jobless rate also rose from 3.4 percent in January to 3.9 percent last month, when most college students graduate. The seasonally adjusted jobless rate remained the same from a year ago.
BANKING
Citi unit to exit Argentina
Citigroup Inc on Tuesday said that it plans to exit its custody business in Argentina “soon,” following a US ruling last week barring it from handling payments on Argentine bonds. The big US bank wants to “exit the custody business in Argentina as soon as possible,” it said in a letter to US Judge Thomas Griesa, who last week prohibited the payments in a long-running legal battle between Argentina and a pair of US hedge funds. The company’s next steps could include the sale of the custody business, or simply terminating it, Citi attorneys at Davis Polk & Wardwell said in the letter.
INTERNET
Adobe unveils cloud service
Adobe Systems Inc, which helped to make the portable file format ubiquitous, is rolling out a suite of Web-based tools for people to create, store and manage documents online. Called Adobe Document Cloud, the service will cost US$15 per month and also give users access to digital signatures, mobile applications and other software for tracking documents, the company said on Tuesday. The new product joins Adobe’s cloud-based marketing and creative-design tools and is part of the company’s push to generate more sales from Internet-based subscriptions.
GREEN ENERGY
China raises solar estimate
China will push this year to install almost two-and-a-half times as much solar capacity as the US added last year in a race to clear its increasingly polluted air. The world’s biggest emitter of carbon aims to install as much as 17.8 gigawatts of solar projects this year, according to a Chinese National Energy Administration planning document seen by Bloomberg. The administration previously estimated 15 gigawatts would be added this year, a person familiar with the matter said. The more ambitious goal might attract as much as 21 billion yuan (US$3.4 billion) of additional investment to solar projects compared with the earlier plan, Bloomberg estimates.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla plans to lead segment
Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday said that people will “take autonomous cars for granted” in a short period of time and signaled that the automaker plans to be a leader in the nascent market. “Tesla is the leader in electric cars, but also will be the leader in autonomous cars, at least autonomous cars that people can buy,” Musk said at a technology conference in San Jose, California. “We’re going to put a lot of effort into autonomous driving. It’s going to be the default thing, and it will save a lot of lives.” Musk plans to announce details of the latest software update to its current Model S customers today.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure