FRANCE
Growth will hold: Insee
Growth will hold up in the first half in the face of a slowing global economy as consumer spending and investment bolster domestic demand, national statistics office Insee said on Thursday. The economy will expand 0.4 percent in both the first and the second quarters, compared with 0.3 percent in the final three months of last year, Insee said. Corporate investment will grow 0.7 percent and 0.8 percent consecutively and consumer spending will climb 0.8 percent and 0.4 percent, the statistics office estimates.
TECHNOLOGY
Alphabet to sell Boston
Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, is seeking to sell its Boston Dynamics subsidiary specialized in developing and manufacturing robots, the Financial Times reported yesterday. Financial agency Bloomberg, which also reported Alphabet intends to sell the company it acquired in 2013 as part of efforts to boost its efforts in robotics, cited two people with knowledge of the company’s plans. Toyota Motor Corp and Amazon.com Inc are seen as potential buyers of Boston Dynamics, Bloomberg reported, as Alphabet “concluded that Boston Dynamics is not likely to produce a marketable product in the next few years.”
UNITED KINGDOM
BOE maintains rate
The Bank of England (BOE) has voted to keep its main interest rate on hold, it said on Thursday, faced with a weak growth outlook at home and abroad. The move by the Monetary Policy Committee to keep borrowing costs at 0.50 percent, where they have stood for seven years, comes a day after the US Federal Reserve also left rates unchanged. The BOE also maintained the amount of cash stimulus, or quantitative easing, pumping around the British economy at £375 billion (US$540 billion).
EUROZONE
Core inflation at 0.8%
Underlying inflation pressures in the 19-country eurozone were not as subdued last month as initially thought, official figures showed on Thursday. The EU’s statistical agency said the core rate, which strips out energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, was 0.8 percent in the year to last month, up from the initial estimate of 0.7 percent. The headline number, which includes those typically more volatile items, was left unchanged at minus-0.2 percent.
REAL ESTATE
Juwai.com plans IPO
Juwai.com (居外網), a property search engine that lists real estate around the world for Chinese buyers, is seeking to go public in Australia as early as this year. The firm is raising funds from institutional investors and strategic partners before selling shares in an initial public offering (IPO) at the end of the year or in early next year, Juwai chief executive officer Charles Pittar said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday. He declined to provide additional details. Juwai, based in Hong Kong and Shanghai, has 2 million unique visitors per month.
MACHINERY
Caterpillar to trail estimates
Caterpillar Inc, the biggest maker of construction and mining machinery, said first-quarter sales and profit will trail analyst estimates as miners cut billions from their investment budgets to weather a commodity rout. Sales will be US$9.3 billion to US$9.4 billion and adjusted earnings per share will be US$0.65 to US$0.70, the company said on Thursday. That is below the average estimates of US$10.2 billion and US$0.95 respectively by analysts.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in