AUTOMOBILES
VW plans staff limits
Volkswagen plans to limit the time staff can remain in certain roles, its supervisory board chairman told the Welt am Sonntag weekly, in a step to improve oversight at the carmaker. VW said in September it had cheated US emissions tests and installed software capable of deceiving regulators, wiping billions of euros off its market value and forcing out its long-standing chief executive. Earlier this month, the carmaker said only a small group of employees was responsible for the incidents and there was no indication board members were involved in what has become the biggest business crisis in the firm’s history. Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch told the newspaper that increasing job rotations would pose a challenge due to the high complexity of some of the roles, but said VW could draw on the expertise of employees across the group.
AUTOMOBILES
Some US Mirages recalled
Mitsubishi Motors is recalling about 25,000 of last year and this year’s Mirages on concerns that certain wires could corrode and cause issues to the vehicle’s air bag systems. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Saturday said that the vehicles affected were manufactured from August 2013 to September of this year and were sold in states on the US’ east coast and in the midwest. The NHTSA says the Mirages have a design flaw in which melting snow could soak through the driver’s-side floor carpeting and corrode wire connectors running to a junction box nearby. The corrosion could cause delays in the deployment of the vehicles’ frontal air bags. The NHTSA said Mitsubishi would notify owners, and any repairs necessary will be done free of charge.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Shkreli denies allegations
Martin Shkreli, the entrepreneur vilified for jacking up the price of a life-saving drug, on Saturday said that unrelated securities fraud allegations that resulted in his arrest last week were “baseless and without merit.” US federal prosecutors have alleged that Shkreli was running a Ponzi-like scheme at his former hedge fund and a company he headed before he took the helm of Turing Pharmaceuticals Inc, where he created an uproar in September when the company raised the price of the drug Daraprim from US$13.50 to US$750 a tablet. “I am confident I will prevail,” Shkreli wrote on Twitter. “The allegations against me are baseless and without merit.” Shkreli on Thursday was charged with securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy related to his management of hedge fund MSMB Capital Management and Retrophin Inc.
BRAZIL
Judge freezes firms’ assets
A judge in Minas Gerais state has frozen the local assets of mining giants BHP Billiton and Vale SA after determining their joint venture Samarco was unable to pay for damage caused by the bursting of a dam at its mine last month. In a ruling issued late on Friday, the judge ruled that Vale and BHP could be held responsible for the disaster at the iron ore mine in the state, for which the government is demanding 20 billion reais (US$5 billion). Vale and BHP are able to appeal that demand. The dam burst, which has become into the nation’s worst ever environmental disaster, killed 16 people and left hundreds homeless. Prosecutors have estimated that Samarco does not have the funds to cover more than half of the damages being sought.
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],”