AVIATION
Bombardier shares dive
Bombardier Inc’s shares dipped on Friday after Canada’s transport minister nixed plans to expand a small Toronto airport that would have earned the manufacturer billions in new jetliners. Regional carrier Porter Airlines had been lobbying since 2013 for extension of the runway at the Billy Bishop airport in order to accommodate new Bombardier CSeries jetliners. Porter signed a tentative agreement with Bombardier in 2013 for up to 30 CS100 passenger jets for US$2.08 billion. Transport Minister Marc Garneau said Ottawa would not reconsider the agreement with the city of Toronto and port authority which restricts takeoffs and landings to small turboprop aircrafts at the downtown airport located on an island.
INTERNET
Yandex targets Google
Yandex NV, building on a recent antitrust victory over Google in Russia, on Friday said it extended the legal battle to the EU as it seeks to force its US competitor to unbundle services such as search from mobile devices using the Android operating system in the region. Russia’s largest search engine asked the European Commission in April to investigate what it says are Google’s anti-competitive practices. “We think that the Russian finding of abuse of dominance is instructive and is a conclusion that can readily be adopted in other jurisdictions, including the EU,” Amsterdam-based Yandex said in a statement. Google plans to appeal the Russian decision, said a person familiar with the matter.
FOOD MAKERS
Hershey to use real vanilla
The candy company wants to keep the ingredients list on two of its famous chocolates short and sweet. It said on Friday its milk chocolate Hershey’s Kisses and bars are now being made with flavor from real vanilla instead of an artificial flavor. The change is the first part of the company’s previously announced plans to use simpler ingredients. The company has also banished PGPR, which makes chocolate flow better in a manufacturing plant, from the bars. Instead, it is adding more cocoa butter to produce the right texture.
UNITED STATES
Sotheby’s offering buyouts
The company is offering employees voluntary buyouts to cut costs after a drop in third-quarter revenue grabbed more attention from the company’s investors than its largest-ever semiannual auction season. The auction house told employees in an e-mail on Friday that if not enough employees make use of the buyouts, it might have to resort to layoffs. Sotheby’s did not say how many jobs it plans to cut. Eligible employees have until Nov. 30 to submit an application, according to an internal document describing the buyout program.
CYPRUS
Recession over: officials
The eurozone member is well out of recession, having notched up a third consecutive quarter of growth, and is looking for GDP to expand at least 1.5 percent this year, officials said on Friday. The economy grew a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent in the third quarter, the same as in the previous three months and following 1.3 percent in the first quarter, the statistical service said. Moreover, third-quarter growth was up 2.2 percent on the year-earlier period, and 0.6 percent in the second quarter.
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