Carrefour yesterday said it was pulling out of Singapore with the closure of its two existing outlets in the city-state by the end of this year.
The French retail giant was the first to introduce the hypermarket concept in Singapore with the opening of its first store in 1997.
TOUGH MARKET
However, Carrefour has found it tough to penetrate Singapore’s market of 5.2 million people largely because other rivals are better entrenched with a wider network of branches, many of them near public housing estates.
Carrefour’s two existing stores are located within distance of each other in the city-state’s main shopping and business district.
“Carrefour Singapore announces the decision to close its Suntec and Plaza Singapura stores before end of this year, since expansion and growth perspectives do not allow reaching a leadership position in the medium and long term,” the retailer said in a statement.
The decision to withdraw from Singapore is not a surprise, according to a senior executive with an Asian electronics company that is among Carrefour’s suppliers.
‘NOT COMPETITIVE’
“There was a lot of talk [of closing] from the internal staff and they have been clearing stock for the last two months,” said the executive, who declined to be named. “They were just not competitive enough.”
Carrefour, the world’s second-biggest retailer behind US group Walmart, reported in March that last year’s profit dropped by 14.3 percent to 371 million euros (US$463 million) amid weaker economic conditions.
SEEKING CLARITY: Washington should not adopt measures that create uncertainties for ‘existing semiconductor investments,’ TSMC said referring to its US$165 billion in the US Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) told the US that any future tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors could reduce demand for chips and derail its pledge to increase its investment in Arizona. “New import restrictions could jeopardize current US leadership in the competitive technology industry and create uncertainties for many committed semiconductor capital projects in the US, including TSMC Arizona’s significant investment plan in Phoenix,” the chipmaker wrote in a letter to the US Department of Commerce. TSMC issued the warning in response to a solicitation for comments by the department on a possible tariff on semiconductor imports by US President Donald Trump’s
‘FAILED EXPORT CONTROLS’: Jensen Huang said that Washington should maximize the speed of AI diffusion, because not doing so would give competitors an advantage Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday criticized the US government’s restrictions on exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, saying that the policy was a failure and would only spur China to accelerate AI development. The export controls gave China the spirit, motivation and government support to accelerate AI development, Huang told reporters at the Computex trade show in Taipei. The competition in China is already intense, given its strong software capabilities, extensive technology ecosystems and work efficiency, he said. “All in all, the export controls were a failure. The facts would suggest it,” he said. “The US
The government has launched a three-pronged strategy to attract local and international talent, aiming to position Taiwan as a new global hub following Nvidia Corp’s announcement that it has chosen Taipei as the site of its Taiwan headquarters. Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday last week announced during his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei that the Nvidia Constellation, the company’s planned Taiwan headquarters, would be located in the Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區) in Taipei. Huang’s decision to establish a base in Taiwan is “primarily due to Taiwan’s talent pool and its strength in the semiconductor
French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed gratitude to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) for its plan to invest approximately 250 million euros (US$278 million) in a joint venture in France focused on the semiconductor and space industries. On his official X account on Tuesday, Macron thanked Hon Hai, also known globally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), for its investment projects announced at Choose France, a flagship economic summit held on Monday to attract foreign investment. In the post, Macron included a GIF displaying the national flag of the Republic of China (Taiwan), as he did for other foreign investors, including China-based
RSS