TRANSPORTATION
Uber offering Ubercopter
Ride hailing company Uber Technologies Inc has begun providing helicopter rides in Brazil’s biggest city, Sao Paulo. Uber communications director Fabio Sabba on Tuesday said the company has started a month-long trial of the Ubercopter service between airports, hotels and convention centers. Sabba said the service is operating from five helipads and four hotels. In a brief telephone interview, he said Ubercopter is a partnership with the Airbus Group and uses three helicopter operators in Sao Paulo. He said that prices range from US$17 to US$80 a seat.
AUTOMAKERS
Jaguar opens Brazil plant
Jaguar Land Rover opened a factory in Brazil as part of efforts to increase local sourcing of components and reduce the impact of currency fluctuations on its profits. The plant is the company’s first wholly owned facility outside its home market, the UK, and is to produce the Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque sport utility vehicles for sale across Brazil this month, it said in an e-mailed statement. The luxury unit of India’s Tata Motors Ltd will buy parts such as seats, chassis and powertrain assembly from Brazilian suppliers for the factory.
MEDIA
Johnson sells ‘Ebony’
Ebony and Jet magazines, which have chronicled black American life for the past 71 years, have been sold to an Austin, Texas-based private equity firm. Johnson Publishing Co on Tuesday announced that Ebony and digital-only Jet were sold to Clear View Group, but did not disclose the sale price. The Chicago Tribune reported that Johnson Publishing will retain its fashion fair cosmetics business. Ebony magazine, founded by John Johnson, first hit the newsstands in 1945. It has been hit by declining circulation and revenues in recent years.
FINANCE
Goldman disrupts debt sale
Goldman Sachs Group Inc is causing headaches for fellow Wall Street banks that are trying to offload US$3 billion of risky debt that funded last year’s biggest leveraged buyout, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Goldman Sachs sold about US$100 million of the loans last week at US$0.85 on the US$1 dollar, US$0.05 lower than where a group of lenders led by Bank of America Corp were marketing the debt at the same time, the people said. The bank group is now offering the larger chunk of the debt at a similar discount after some investors pushed for matching concessions, the people said. The bank’s decision is a break from a common industry practice where lenders that commit to fund large corporate transactions pool their efforts to find investors for the debt.
PROPERTY
Singapore home sales rise
Singapore developers sold the most homes in 10 months last month, helped by the successful marketing of new projects as prices have been declining since September 2013. Developers sold 1,056 units last month, compared with a revised 748 in April, according to data released yesterday by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. That is the highest number of homes since July last year. Singapore home prices dropped for 10 quarters in the period ended March 31, posting the longest losing streak in almost two decades, as property curbs dampened demand. An index tracking private residential prices fell 0.7 percent in the three months ended March 31 from the previous quarter, according to data from the agency.
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