AUTOMAKERS
Union members detained
A Russian union official said on Monday that 15 members had been briefly detained by police as tensions rose in disputes involving Volkswagen and Peugeot factories. Dmitry Trudovoi of the MPRA union said the 15 were detained on Saturday while meeting at the union’s office, were held for about two hours and questioned about union activities by police from an “anti-extremism” unit. Police were quoted by Russia’s Interfax agency as saying that 12 activists were held as part of an investigation into a theft near the union office.
AUTOMAKERS
GM to pay compensation
Chevrolet, part of General Motors Co (GM) of the US, was on Monday ordered to pay its French dealers nearly 8 million euros (US$8.5 million) in compensation by a Paris court for the “brutal” withdrawal of its brand from Europe. GM announced in December 2013 that it was withdrawing Chevrolets this year due to poor sales. Seventeen dealers had claimed damages of 33 million euros, after alleging that Chevrolet France had put pressure on dealerships that did not accept their initial offer of compensation.
RETAILERS
H&M profit beats estimates
Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) AB, Europe’s second-largest clothing retailer, reported a first-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates as the company extended its offering of sportswear, shoes and beauty products. Net income rose 36 percent to 3.61 billion kronor (US$423 million) in the three months ending on Feb. 28, the Stockholm-based company said in a statement yesterday. The average of 16 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg was for 3.32 billion kronor. H&M also said sales in the first three weeks of this month rose 9 percent in local currency terms.
BANKING
Deutsche Bank in rate probe
Deutsche Bank is under investigation in New York state for rigging the LIBOR interest rate, a person familiar with the probe said on Monday. Germany’s largest bank is suspected of having participated with other banks in a “vast manipulation of LIBOR,” the person said. The probe is led by Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of financial services in New York state. The information about Lawsky’s probe was first reported by the Financial Times on Monday.
INTERNET
New suffixes snapped up
The singer Taylor Swift, Microsoft Corp and Harvard University were among those buying up .porn and .adult Web suffixes as a pre-emptive move before the domain names become available this summer. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is making Internet address suffixes beyond the usual .com or .org available for people and businesses to use. According to the site, Microsoft has bought not only Microsoft.porn but Office.porn and Office.adult as well. Representatives for Taylor Swift, Microsoft and Harvard could not immediately be reached for comment.
INTERNET
Instagram releases new app
Instagram on Monday released a standalone application that makes it easy to create collages of iPhone pictures. Features of the new application by the Facebook-owned smartphone photo sharing service include the ability to automatically find pictures containing faces and the option to share the collages on Facebook as well as on Instagram.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”