HONG KONG
Retail sales growth falters
Retail sales growth slowed in November last year, as US-China trade tensions dampened sentiment, the Census and Statistics Department said on Thursday. Retail sales value rose 1.4 percent from a year earlier, the slowest growth since June 2017, it said. Retail volume rose 1.2 percent, which was also the slowest increase in 17 months. The jewelry, watches and clocks category — which made up nearly one-sixth of total nominal retail sales value — fell 3.9 percent, the biggest contraction among the major categories.
IRELAND
Budget returns to surplus
The government is running a surplus for the first time since the financial crisis of 2008 thanks to a surge in corporate profit tax, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Thursday. The surplus had been achieved 12 months early through a “very big increase” in the amount of tax raised through corporations, he said. Such revenue was coming in between 1 billion and 2 billion euros (US$1.1 billion and US2.2 billion) ahead of projections for last year, he said.
AUTOMAKERS
Mercedes tops luxury brands
Fewer than 5,000 vehicles separated the top two luxury brands by sales in the US last year, with Mercedes-Benz barely topping BMW for a third straight victory. Daimler AG’s Mercedes limped a bit over the finish line with a 9.1 percent drop last month. The 315,959 cars and sport utility vehicles the brand delivered last year were still 4,945 more than BMW AG’s namesake division. For the second straight year, Toyota Motor Corp’s Lexus division finished third.
AUTOMAKERS
Ghosn could appear in court
Former Nissan Motor Co chairman Carlos Ghosn is likely to appear in a Japanese court to hear the reasons for his detention, possibly within days, after his lawyers deployed a little-used article of the Constitution. A public hearing could take place within five days, according to Japan Broadcasting Corp (NHK), after the executive’s attorneys lodged a request with the Tokyo District Court that it cannot legally refuse. NHK said Ghosn wants to attend the hearing himself if there is one.
AUTOMAKERS
Volvo to take US$780m hit
Volvo AB, the world’s second-largest truckmaker, is to set aside 7 billion kronor (US$780 million) to address a faulty emissions-control component that has worn out more quickly than expected. The charge will eat into operating income in the just-finished fourth quarter, while the drag on cash-flow will last for several years, the Gothenburg, Sweden-based manufacturer said on Thursday in a statement issued after trading closed in Stockholm.
BANKING
Three ex-bankers arrested
Three former Credit Suisse Group AG bankers were arrested in London on Thursday on US charges that they took part in a fraud scheme involving US$2 billion in loans to state-owned companies in Mozambique. Andrew Pearse, 49, Surjan Singh, 44, and Detelina Subeva, 37, were charged in an indictment in Brooklyn, New York federal court with conspiring to violate US anti-bribery law and to commit money laundering and securities fraud, US prosecutors’ spokesman John Marzulli said. They have been released on bail in London while the US seeks extradition.
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