AUTOMAKERS
EU opens antitrust probe
The European Commission is investigating five carmakers including Renault SA and Peugeot-maker PSA Group for possible antitrust violations on car parts, German weekly Der Spiegel reported, without saying where it obtained the information. Nissan Motor Co, Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV are also being investigated, the report said. The probe centers around whether the companies colluded to raise prices by as much as 25 percent on car parts with the help of consulting firm Accenture.
ITALY
Fitch maintains rating
Italy’s sovereign credit rating was left unchanged at two notches above junk by Fitch Ratings, which said that an extremely high level of general government debt and the absence of structural fiscal adjustment still pose risks. The level was confirmed at “BBB,” while the outlook was maintained at negative. Fitch forecasts GDP growth of 0.3 percent this year, down from 0.8 percent last year, with investment growth falling to 0.4 percent from 3.8 percent last year. It expects an increase in the general government deficit to 2.3 percent of GDP this year, from 1.9 percent last year.
TECHNOLOGY
Twitter cofounder departs
Twitter Inc cofounder and former chief executive Evan Williams is stepping down from the board, leaving the one-to-many messaging service to focus on “other projects,” the firm said. Williams is to depart the Twitter board at the end of this week, Twitter said in a filing on Friday. Williams ceded his role as chief executive to Dick Costolo in 2010.
ENRON
Former CEO leaves prison
Former Enron Corp chief executive Jeffrey Skilling has been released from prison after serving 12 years for his role in a fraud scheme that sent the US energy giant into bankruptcy. The Houston Chronicle reported that Skilling, 65, was released on Thursday after completing about half of what was initially a 24-year sentence, but was reduced on appeal. Skilling was in May 2006 convicted of 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading, and ordered to forfeit about US$45 million in assets, including his home.
BANKING
EY probed over scandal
EY, the accounting firm engaged by Swedbank AB following a report that the bank was involved in money laundering, is being probed in Denmark over an Estonian dirty-money scandal surrounding Danske Bank A/S. The investigation of EY has been running since October, after Danske admitted that much of the U$230 billion that flowed through a tiny Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015 was suspicious, a Danish government spokesman said on Friday
ENGINEERING
SNC writes down oil assets
SNC-Lavalin Group Inc, a Canadian engineering and construction giant, on Friday posted a C$1.6 billion (US$1.22 billion) quarterly loss. The Montreal-based firm wrote down significant oil and gas assets and warned that its business prospects in Saudi Arabia, where it has major engineering contracts, were worsening because of a diplomatic row between Ottawa and Riyadh.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts