INVESTMENT
Moody’s trims US forecast
Moody’s Investors Service lowered its growth forecast for the US economy this year to 2 percent from 2.3 percent to account for a weak first quarter, while anticipating underlying resilience through this year. Moody’s said it expects the US Federal Reserve to raise its benchmark interest rate “at most” twice this year, according to a statement it e-mailed. The ratings company also sees the US’ GDP rising 2.3 percent next year.
CYBERSECURITY
Panel probes cyberheist
The computer of a Bangladeshi central bank official was hacked to carry out one of the largest cyberheists in history, a Bangladeshi diplomat said yesterday. Bangladeshi ambassador to the Philippines John Gomes told a Philippine panel investigating how the stolen US$81 million from Bangladesh central bank ended up in Manila, the hackers were neither Filipino or Bangladeshi. There is also no evidence directly linking anyone in Bangladesh to the cyberheist, Gomes said.
RETAIL
UK sales pick up in Q2
UK retail sales began the second quarter with more momentum than economists forecast. The volume of goods sold in stores and online rose 1.3 percent last month from March, more than double the 0.6 percent increase forecast in a Bloomberg survey. Food sales rose 0.1 percent and non-food sales grew 2.5 percent, with all retail categories showing increases. Excluding auto fuel, retail sales rose 1.5 percent, also more than predicted. In the three months through last month, retail sales grew 0.3 percent, the weakest pace since September 2014.
SAUDI ARABIA
IMF welcomes reforms
The IMF yesterday welcomed accelerated economic reforms by the nation to reduce its reliance on oil, but said more measures are needed to cover a fiscal deficit. Over the past 12 months “there has been a significant acceleration in reforms in Saudi Arabia,” an IMF team said in a statement following a visit to the kingdom. It said the Vision 2030 plan, announced by Riyadh last month, sets a bold and far-reaching transformation of the economy to diversify growth, reduce dependence on oil and increase the role of the private sector.
AUSTRALIA
Economy adds jobs
The economy added jobs last month and the unemployment rate held at a two-and-a-half-year low, as the number of people in part-time jobs increased. Unemployment was unchanged at 5.7 percent, as employment rose 10,800 from March, the government’s report showed yesterday. Full-time jobs fell by 9,300, while part-time employment rose by 20,200, with participation rate, a measure of labor force as a share of the population, dropped to 64.8 percent, the report said.
INTERNET
Tencent net profit surges
Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) on Wednesday reported a 33 percent surge in net profit for the first quarter, as its popular messaging app WeChat added more users. Net profit for the quarter ended in March was 9.18 billion yuan (US$1.42 billion), according to a statement. Revenue for the first three months jumped 43 percent year-on-year to 32 billion yuan. Monthly active users for WeChat — known as Weixin in Chinese — were 762 million at the end of the quarter, up 39 percent on the year, the company said.
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