GERMANY
Merkel promotes TTIP
Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to drum up support in Germany for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) ahead of the G7 summit she is hosting next month, saying in an interview yesterday that she hopes it will be finalized by 2017. Merkel told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper it was important that talks between the EU and US lead to an accord before US President Barack Obama leaves office in January 2017. Without an agreement on TTIP between the EU and the US by early 2017, Merkel fears there could be “a long interruption” in the talks.
PETROLEUM
Mexico opens up bidding
Mexico’s oil regulator said it is to allow pre-qualified companies including Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp to bid on all 14 shallow water blocks up for auction after removing restrictions. Companies pre-qualified to bid to explore for oil in Mexico’s shallow waters will be able to participate in auctions for all available blocks, Mexican National Hydrocarbons Commissioner Juan Carlos Zepeda said on Friday in Mexico City. Nineteen individual companies and seven groups pre-qualified this week to bid on the blocks.
PUERTO RICO
Padilla signs tax hike bill
Puerto Rico’s governor has signed into law a bill increasing the US territory’s sales tax from 7 percent to 11.5 percent. It is scheduled to go into effect on July 1. The law signed by Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla on Friday night also calls for a new 4 percent tax on professional services that is to go into effect later this year. The taxes are expected to generate up to US$1.2 billion in revenue.
INDIA
GDP grows by 7.3 percent
India posted annual growth of 7.3 percent on Friday, overtaking China in the first three months of this year, but analysts warned further measures were needed to boost the economy. The growth rate for the financial year that ended on March 31 came in slightly lower than the 7.4 percent that the statistics ministry had predicted back in February. Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley said the latest figures suggested the economy was in recovery mode.
MINING
Codelco Q1 profit plummets
Chile’s state-run copper giant Codelco on Friday said its profit plunged by more than 40 percent in the first quarter from the previous year because of tumbling prices for the metal. The world’s largest copper company said it earned US$312 million in the first quarter, compared with US$539 in the same period a year ago. However, Codelco’s production rose by 3 percent in the first quarter to 394,000 tonnes, boosted by new mining projects. Its output for all of last year also rose by 3 percent to 1.67 million tonnes versus 2013.
INTERNET
Snapchat raises US$537m
Snapchat Inc on Friday informed US regulators that it has raised US$537 million in a new round of equity funding that could climb as high as US$650 million. The vanishing-message service did not disclose who bought stakes in the Los Angeles-based company, which came at a price estimated to give Snapchat a value of more than US$15 billion, according to media reports.
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],”