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.
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
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
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure