PHARMACEUTICALS
Circassia’s late study fails
Drug developer Circassia Pharmaceuticals PLC said its cat allergy treatment failed to meet its main goal in a late-stage study, due to a marked placebo effect. Circassia said that all groups in the study showed improvement compared with the baseline and that the results of the active treatment groups were not significantly different to placebo. The company said it would stop its registration study of a grass allergy treatment and preparatory work for a dose-ranging study of its ragweed allergy therapy.
APPLIANCES
LG seeking acquisitions
LG Electronics Inc, which has businesses ranging from TVs to washing machines, is looking at home appliance acquisitions to fuel its global expansion and withstand a slowing smartphone market. The company is likely to focus on business-to-business targets, such as component makers, LG Home Appliance Division president Jo Seong-jin said in an interview. Earnings from the business will increase in the quarters ahead, Jo said, as he expects the unit’s sales to rise about 10 percent this year. LG, like larger rival Samsung Electronics Co, is trying to innovate and push into premium segments to capture more affluent consumers amid increased competition from Chinese rivals, including Midea Group (美的) and Haier Electronics Group (海爾). The company might increase its investment in Vietnam and has not ruled out establishing factories elsewhere in North America, as well as Brazil and South Africa, Jo said.
JAPAN
Trade drops into deficit
Japan fell into a trade deficit last month, the first since January, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday, as renewed yen strength pressured exports. Exports fell for all major regions, including the nation’s biggest trading partner, China, as concerns linger over a slowdown in the largest Asian economy, as well as other emerging markets. A rising yen dents exports by making the country’s products more expensive in overseas markets and thus less competitive. The currency, often seen as a safe haven, has broadly gained in recent months, partially on fears over the state of the global economy and more recently on concerns over a possible British exit from the EU in a referendum on Thursday.
TRANSPORTATION
Suez raises tolls for VLCCs
Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority has set new toll rates for oil tankers as part of a six-month experiment that came into effect on Thursday last week, it said on its Web site. Very large crude carriers (VLCCs) transiting the canal from the Gulf of Aden after discharging at the Sumed pipeline are to be charged US$155,000 if they are carrying more than 250,000 in deadweight tonnage. VLCCs are to pay US$230,000 on their return ballast trip. The canal is one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency. Egypt has been struggling to revive its economy since a 2011 uprising scared away tourists and foreign investors.
QATAR
Oil prices slow development
A US$200 billion infrastructure program could see higher costs and delays because of the slump in oil prices, the government said on Sunday. A study from the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics said that “continued volatility” in the oil market was likely to have consequences for the vast construction projects underway. The ministry predicted that Doha would run budget deficits for at least three years as it adjusts its energy-reliant economy to the fall in oil prices.
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
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
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