ITALY
Authorities chase Amazon
Tax authorities are chasing US online retail behemoth Amazon.com Inc for 130 million euros (US$140 million) in tax on its Italian operations, local media reported on Saturday. Following similar investigations into Google and Apple Inc, tax police reportedly handed Milan prosecutors a dossier on their investigations on 2009 to 2014 returns by the world’s largest online retailer. In a statement, Amazon denied the claim, adding that it had invested about 800 million euros over the past seven years in the nation, where it employs about 2,000 people, and had reduced profits there to ramp down its tax exposure.
AUTOMAKERS
US probes GM recall
The US government is investigating whether General Motors Co should add about 312,000 vehicles to a 2015 recall for headlights that can suddenly go dark. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday said that 128 owners have complained that low-beam lights can fail. The investigation covers the 2005 and 2009 Buick Lacrosse; the 2006 and 2007 Chevrolet TrailBlazer, GMC Envoy and Buick Rainier; the 2006-2008 Isuzu Ascender and Saab 9-7X; and the 2007 Pontiac Grand Prix. At the time of the recall GM said the headlamp module in the engine compartment could overheat and stop working properly.
INTERNET
Google CEO paid US$200m
Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai last year received a US$200 million compensation package for running the Internet company that makes nearly all the money for Alphabet Inc. Most of the pay consisted of Alphabet stock that the company valued at US$198.7 million in securities documents filed on Friday. Alphabet gave the award to Pichai in January last year, a few months after he succeeded Larry Page as Google’s chief executive officer. The 44-year-old Pichai last year also received a US$650,000 salary in addition to personal security services and air travel valued at US$372,000.
TECHNOLOGY
IBM pay plan challenged
IBM’s compensation plan for top executives drew record shareholder opposition after the board last year boosted chief executive officer Ginni Rometty’s pay package more than 60 percent. About 46 percent of the votes cast at Tuesday’s annual meeting in Tampa, Florida, went against the board’s pay plan for top bosses, according to a regulatory filing on Friday. That is IBM’s lowest result since votes were first mandated for public companies in 2011. While it is not binding, 30 percent opposition is generally considered the threshold for a losing vote and a result that should prompt directors to address shareholder concerns. The board “will review the results of this vote, as is its customary practice,” IBM said in an e-mailed statement.
UTILITIES
Swiss court rejects appeal
A Swiss court has rejected an appeal by Egyptian energy companies after a French court last year ordered them to pay US$2 billion in compensation to state-owned Israel Electric Corp (IEC), the Israeli utility said. An IEC statement on Friday said that Egyptian Natural Gas and Egyptian General Petroleum Corp were liable because they were unable to fulfil their commitment to provide it with natural gas for its power stations. Egypt sold gas to Israel under a 20-year agreement that collapsed in 2012 after months of repeated attacks by insurgents on a pipeline serving Israel in Egypt’s remote Sinai Peninsula.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts