CANADA
Inflation rises to 2.5%
The annual inflation rate rose to 2.5 percent last month, its highest level in more than six years, on the back of higher fuel and food prices, the government said on Friday. Inflation rose 2.2 percent in May and last month’s figure was higher than analysts had expected. It was the highest rate since early 2012. Last week, the Bank of Canada raised the country’s benchmark interest rate to 1.5 percent in a bid to tame rising prices. The central bank forecast that inflation would settle back to 2 percent “by the second half of 2019.”
AUTOMAKERS
Tata Motors eyes divestment
Tata Motors Ltd, the owner of Jaguar Land Rover, has restarted talks on the sale of a stake in its engineering unit just months after a deal with Warburg Pincus was called off, people with knowledge of the matter said. The carmaker has started preliminary discussions with a private equity firm that expressed interest in buying a stake in Singapore-headquartered Tata Technologies Ltd, the people said. Tata Motors plans to use proceeds from the sale on capital expenditure for its domestic automotive business, one of the people said. Tata Motors is planning further divestments after selling a stake in Tata Technologies, one of the people said.
OIL AND GAS
Shell looking to sell licenses
Royal Dutch Shell PLC is in talks to sell two Nigerian oil licenses in an area that is at the heart of environmental and human rights controversies for US$2 billion, people familiar with the plan said. The Anglo-Dutch oil major is discussing selling oil mining licenses 11 and 17 to Heirs Holdings Ltd, a company run by Nigerian tycoon Tony Elumelu, the people said. Included in the sale are infrastructure assets, such as a natural gas-fired power plant that would be managed by Transnational Corporation of Nigeria PLC, another company run by Elumelu, they said.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Bayer pulls birth control coil
Life sciences company Bayer AG on Friday said it would discontinue the sale of its birth control product Essure in the US, citing a decline in sales of the implantable device that made the business no longer sustainable. Bayer said the decision was not related to safety concerns. The company, based in Leverkusen, Germany, is facing about 16,000 US lawsuits over Essure and it said it was expecting more. The firm said it has informed the US Food and Drug Administration of its decision and would update healthcare providers.
DIPLOMACY
Iran, ASEAN to sign treaty
Iran is to sign a cooperation treaty with ASEAN at an upcoming meeting that is also to be attended by US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and North Korean officials, a Singaporean diplomat said. Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif would sign the document at a gathering of ASEAN foreign ministers starting on July 30 in Singapore, Singaporean non-resident ambassador to Iran Ong Keng Yong (王景榮) said in an interview. “The ASEAN countries welcome anyone who wants to sign onto the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation,” said Ong, a former ASEAN secretary-general.
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
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
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