TECHNOLOGY
French tax plan loses steam
France’s drive to force Internet giants to pay more taxes is losing steam, amid resistance from other EU countries that serve as tax shelters to companies like Apple Inc. Under pressure from Ireland, Luxembourg and Britain, EU leaders in Brussels on Friday stopped short of calling for a Europe-wide policy for digital multinationals. The EU’s 28 leaders agreed to push for “an effective and fair taxation system fit for the digital era,” but said it should be an international system, not just European.
AVIATION
Airbus to push CSeries sales
A deal giving Airbus SE a controlling stake in Bombardier Inc’s CSeries jets should lead to extra work for the Canadian planemaker’s factory in Northern Ireland, UK Business Secretary Greg Clark said on Friday, after meeting with executives from both companies. Airbus’ investment this week in the Montreal-based plane and train maker’s CSeries jets is expected to reduce costs and increase sales of the narrow-body jets. Bombardier is the largest manufacturing employer in Northern Ireland, which is the poorest of the UK’s four nations.
RETAIL
Hudson Bay’s Storch leaving
The parent of Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue said on Friday that CEO Jerry Storch is stepping down and will return to his advisory firm on Nov. 1. Storch has been CEO of Toronto-based Hudson’s Bay, which also operates the department store chain under its namesake, since January 2015. Hudson’s Bay said it has retained an executive search firm to recruit a new CEO. Executive chairman Richard Baker is to serve as interim CEO.
STOCKS
LSE chief stepping down
London Stock Exchange Group PLC (LSE) said on Thursday that its chief executive officer Xavier Rolet will leave the bourse operator by the end of December next year, just under a decade after he took the helm at the firm. LSE said it would start looking for his successor now. The group also reported a 17 percent rise in third-quarter total income to £486 million (US$641 million), as its clearing and FTSE Russell businesses grew strongly.
TECHNOLOGY
Sweden to get battery factory
Start-up company Northvolt AB said on Thursday it had picked its home country Sweden to build Europe’s biggest factory for electric car batteries, rivalling Tesla Inc’s US “Gigafactory.” The factory at Skelleftea is to employ up to 2,500 people. Construction of the factory is to start in the second half of next year and it is expected to raise production progressively between 2020 and 2023. Once fully operational, the site is to produce lithium-ion batteries totaling 32 gigawatt-hours per year, Northvolt said.
AUTOMAKERS
LG, Qualcomm partner up
LG Electronics Co said on Thursday that it will work with Qualcomm Inc to jointly research and develop autonomous driving technologies. The South Korean company said the two firms have opened a joint research center in Seoul and will open another one in Seoul by the end of next year. Their joint research will focus on developing 5G wireless technology and other wireless technologies needed for the safety of connected cars, LG 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
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)