European stocks posted a second week of gains as the US Federal Reserve announced a third round of quantitative easing and Germany’s highest constitutional court cleared the way for the euro-area’s permanent bailout fund.
Carmakers and mining companies led the rally as US officials also raised their outlook for the world’s largest economy. Peugeot SA advanced 9.5 percent, while Kazakhmys PLC jumped 18 percent. Commerzbank AG and Royal Bank of Scotland PLC climbed more than 14 percent. European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co slid 15 percent after announcing talks for a potential merger with BAE Systems PLC.
The benchmark STOXX Europe 600 Index gained 1.3 percent to 275.95 this week, reaching the highest daily close since June 1 last year. The gauge has surged 18 percent from this year’s low on June 4 amid speculation central banks around the world would take further measures to support an economic recovery.
National benchmark indices this week increased in all of the 18 western European markets except Denmark. The UK’s FTSE 100 rose 2.1 percent, France’s CAC 40 added 1.8 percent and Germany’s DAX Index climbed 2.7 percent. Italy’s FTSE MIB rallied 3.2 percent, while Spain’s IBEX 35 jumped 3.5 percent.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
RSS