UNITED KINGDOM
Private sector holds firm
Private-sector growth continues to hold firm after the Brexit vote, according to the Confederation of British Industry. A survey of 715 businesses, published on Sunday, found retailers and consumer-facing companies led the increase in sales in the three months to last month, while manufacturers saw slower growth. The business lobby said that the outlook also remained positive, with a slightly higher rate of expansion expected over the next quarter. The figures chime with data released since the referendum that show an economy performing better than many expected.
ENTERTAINMENT
GIC to invest in movie chain
GIC Pte, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, agreed to partner with an Indonesian cinema operator by investing 3.5 trillion rupiah (US$260 million) to help expand the theater chain across the country. PT Nusantara Sejahtera Raya, which operates the Cinema 21, Cinema XXI and The Premiere brands in Indonesia, has entered into a strategic partnership with GIC, the companies said in a joint statement yesterday. The company operates 157 cinemas across 36 cities in Indonesia, Nusantara Sejahtera Raya said in the statement.
UNITED STATES
Growth forecast to pick up
Business economists still expect economic growth to pick up next year — but they see a slowdown in hiring. The median estimate from economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics calls for the economy to grow 2.2 percent next year, up from a forecast 1.6 percent this year and unchanged from association’s previous survey in September. They see the risk of a recession as remote; 90 percent expect the current economic expansion to continue until at least 2018. The economists expect employers to add an average 168,000 jobs a month next year, down from 180,000 a month so far this year. They predict the unemployment rate, which fell to a nine-year low 4.6 percent last month, will average 4.7 percent next year.
BANKING
RBS to settle cases
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS) said it will pay as much as £800 million (US$1 billion) to settle cases related to litigation over its 2008 shareholder rights issue. The bank has reached agreement with three of the five shareholder groups representing 77 percent of the claims by value, the bank said in a statement yesterday. The bank is still in discussions with the other two groups, it said. The £800 million, which is covered by existing provisions, would be split among the five groups.
BANKING
Credit Suisse to slash jobs
Credit Suisse Group AG is preparing a new cost savings program that puts as many as 1,300 jobs in Switzerland on the line, according to Schweiz am Sonntag. The plan will be announced tomorrow, when the lender holds its investor day in London, the newspaper said, without saying where it got the information. Credit Suisse’s Swiss unit might slash an additional 1,000 to 1,300 positions, or about 8 to 10 percent of the unit’s workforce, it said. Credit Suisse did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The bank has been pulling back from costly debt-trading after losses on high-risk bets flared up earlier this year. A slump in its equities business, which the lender said it wants to grow, has added to difficulties at the global markets unit.
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
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
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)