ECONOMY
EU recovery weakens: index
The eurozone’s economic recovery weakened for a second month this month as growth in Germany lost momentum. Markit Economics yesterday said that its composite index of services and manufacturing in the eurozone slipped to 53.4 from 53.9 last month and 54 in March. While that is above the 50 mark that divides expansion from contraction, it is less than the reading of 53.9 forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey. The German gauge dropped to 52.8 from 54.1.
MALAYSIA
PM touts growing GDP
Prime Minister Najib Razak said Malaysia’s real GDP would grow at a steady 5 and 6 percent annually until 2020, and promised more jobs and affordable housing as he looked to shore up support amid growing political pressure. Najib, who tabled the 11th Malaysian Economic Plan in parliament, also said growth would result in a 7.9 percent yearly rise in gross national income per capita.
TECHNOLOGY
Lenovo revenue up
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) yesterday said revenue rose 20 percent last fiscal year, helped by its purchase of Motorola. The firm said revenue reached US$46.30 billion for the year ending on March 31. Mobile business revenue — including Motorola — increased 71 percent year-on-year to US$9.14 billion. Net profit was up only 1 percent at US$829 million, amid higher operating expenses, Lenovo said in a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange.
BANKING
Deutsche Bank unit probed
Deutsche Bank has launched an internal probe of its investments division in Russia, it said on Wednesday, as German media outlets reported suspected money laundering. The statement came after German weekly Manager Magazin said several of the bank’s employees in Russia were suspected of laundering sums of dubious origin for Russian clients by carrying out complex transactions on the derivatives market.
TOURISM
London tops UK visitor list
London received a record number of foreign visitors last year, with 17.4 million tourists flooding into the British capital, according a survey by the national statistics office. The figures found a 3.5 percent increase from 2013, which was also a record year, according to the UK Office for National Statistics International Passenger Survey. The MasterCard global destination cities index for last year rated the British capital as the top city destination for tourists, followed by Bangkok and Paris.
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