AUTOMAKERS
JLR moving base to Slovakia
Britain’s biggest automaker, Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC (JLR), is moving all production of its Land Rover Discovery to Slovakia from a plant near Birmingham, which is to be retooled to accommodate a new generation of electric cars. The company, owned by Tata Motors Ltd, would create a new factory platform at its Solihull, England, plant that would enable the production of cars in electric, gasoline and diesel versions, said people familiar with the matter, asking not to be named because the information is not public. Discovery production would be moved from the beginning of next year, meaning job cuts at the Solihull plant are possible before it ramps up staffing again, the people said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Job growth remains healthy
The economy continued to create jobs at a healthy pace in the three months through April, but wage growth unexpectedly slowed. The employment rate reached a record-high of 75.6 percent after the economy added 146,000 jobs, more than the 120,000 predicted by economists. The jobless rate held at 4.2 percent, its lowest since 1975. However, a surprise moderation in the pace of wage growth might suggest that the economy retains a margin of spare capacity. Pay growth excluding bonuses slowed to 2.8 percent between February and April, the Office for National Statistics said yesterday. For Bank of England policymakers, the question is how quickly the economy uses up whatever slack it has left. Bets on an August interest-rate hike receded on Monday after manufacturing and construction failed to bounce back as forecast in April following snow disruptions the previous month.
HEALTHCARE
KKR to buy Envision
Private equity firm KKR & Co is to buy Envision Healthcare Corp for US$5.57 billion plus debt, after a lengthy sale process by the hospital staffing and surgical center company. Including debt, the all-cash purchase is to value Envision at US$9.9 billion, the healthcare company said in a statement on Monday. Envision said the US$46-a-share price represents a 32 percent premium to its stock price in November last year, when it announced it was reviewing strategic alternatives. The review started for the Nashville, Tennessee-based company after activist investor Starboard Value LP, run by Jeff Smith, revealed a stake and said it would make an attractive takeover target.
AUTOMAKERS
Byton raises US$500 million
China-based electric-car start-up Byton (拜騰) has raised US$500 million as it ramps up efforts to take on rivals such as Tesla Motors Inc. Byton’s new capital is led by from First Automobile Works Group Corp (中國第一汽車集團), Tus-Holdings Co (啟迪控股), Contemporary Amperex Technology Co (寧德新時代能源科技) and others, a statement from its North American headquarters in California said on Monday. “The success of this funding round highlights how diversified strategic investors will further expand Byton’s circle of friends and broaden our development opportunities,” president and co-founder Daniel Kirchert said. Early this year, the company unveiled at the CES its vision for “intuitive and intelligent” cars for global markets starting next year from about US$45,000. Byton is led by former executives from Tesla, BMW AG, Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, and expects to launch in China by next year and in the US and Europe by 2020.
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