AUTOMAKERS
Rivals closing in on Tesla
Daimler AG, BMW AG and Volkswagen AG are closing in and might pass Tesla Inc in the electric automaking industry, based on a ranking that factors strategy, battery technology, culture, supplier networks, partnerships and financial performance into an overall score. Tesla should remain No. 1 next year, according to the forecast by PA Consulting Group, but by 2021, Tesla will fall to seventh place, it said. By then, Daimler would be in the lead, followed by BMW, the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi alliance and VW. Production issues with the Model 3 and an uncertain profit outlook were factors in the lower ranking for Tesla, PA Consulting said.
MACROECONOMICS
Singapore growth slows
Singapore’s economy expanded at a slower pace than forecast in the second quarter, clouding the outlook for the export-reliant city state at a time when global trade risks are rising. GDP rose at a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 1 percent from the prior three months, according to preliminary data from the Singaporean Ministry of Trade and Industry yesterday. The performance is weakest since a contraction in the first quarter of last year, data showed. GDP expanded 3.8 percent from a year earlier, compared with a median estimate of 4.1 percent, the ministry said.
MACROECONOMICS
Powell warns on tariffs
US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gave an upbeat assessment of the US economy, but said that a sustained period of high tariffs on a wide variety of imports could be harmful to growth. “The economy’s in a really good place,” Powell said on Thursday in an interview on American Public Media’s Marketplace program, adding that unemployment was at its lowest level in 20 years, while acknowledging the risk posed by escalating trade disputes. Should those disputes result in “high tariffs on a lot of products and a lot of traded goods and services” that “could be a negative for our economy,” he said. Powell added that inflation has gradually moved up.
EUROZONE
Bulgaria closer to joining
Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest country, on Thursday moved a step closer to joining the euro. After a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels, the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) said an evaluation could be completed in about a year. “The European Commission welcomes Bulgaria’s efforts to join the eurozone,” European Commission Vice President for the Euro and Social Dialogue Valdis Dombrovskis said. “We might expect the ECB to complete its overall assessment in around a year,” members of the eurozone added in a statement.
FINANCE
Moryoussef guilty of rigging
Former Barclays PLC trader Philippe Moryoussef was in his native France when a London jury found him guilty of a conspiracy to rig an interest-rate benchmark that influences trillions of dollars of pensions and mortgages. He had left London days before the trial began in April. The jury took four days to find Moryoussef guilty, bringing seven years of investigations toward an end. He became the seventh person to be found guilty of interest-rate manipulation in the UK. Barclays was among banks that paid about US$9 billion in fines. Still, the UK Serious Fraud Office cannot be sure Moryoussef will ever end up in prison.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by