PHARMACEUTICALS
Drug approvals suspended
Germany’s Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices is suspending the marketing approval of some generic drugs due to concerns over the quality of data from clinical trials conducted by India’s GVK Biosciences. The quality of Indian pharmaceuticals has come under fire this year, with regulators in Europe and the US citing problems ranging from data manipulation to sanitation and banning the import of certain products from several firms. Germany’s drug regulator said on Friday it was investigating drug approvals based on clinical trials meant to show that the generic drugs were equivalent to the original branded versions conducted by GVK between 2008 and this year.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Theft charges dropped
Two former Eli Lilly and Co employees who were accused of sending trade secrets worth more than US$55 million to a competing Chinese drug company no longer face charges, the US attorney’s office announced on Friday. The case against Guoqing Cao (曹國興) and Shuyu Li (李舒裕) collapsed after Lilly provided additional information to the US Department of Justice that changed “the investigative facts initially relied upon by the government” in its case, according to court documents. Cao and Li were arrested on Oct. 1 last year and charged with theft and conspiracy to commit theft involving drugs that Lilly was developing for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.
INTERNET
France to block Pirate Bay
A French court has ordered the country’s main Internet service providers to block notorious file-sharing Web site The Pirate Bay, according to a ruling published on Friday on digital news Web site Numerama. The antipiracy ruling orders Orange, Bouygues Telecom, Free and SFR to block access to the site from France as well as about 20 mirror Web sites and 50 proxy servers that allow users not to be traced. The companies have 15 days to block access to the sites.
RETAIL
Amazon launches diapers
Online retailing giant Amazon.com Inc launched its own brand of diapers on Thursday, opening a new front in retail battles with a direct challenge to name-brand vendors already selling on its Web site. Amazon said the first offerings in its new Amazon Elements line of consumer products would be diapers and baby wipes, and that other competitively priced, “premium” everyday consumer products would soon follow. However, the Elements line is available only to members of Amazon’s Prime US$99-a-year subscription club, with the lowest prices available for those who are also members of its Amazon Mom group.
HOTELS
Bids heat up for Club Med
The bidding war for French holiday group Club Med heated up on Friday as Italian businessman Andrea Bonomi’s Global Resorts said it raised its offer to counter the takeover ambitions of Chinese rival Fosun International (復星). Bonomi’s group has offered 24 euros per share, valuing Club Med at 915 million euros (US$1.125 billion) in the takeover competition that began more than 18 months ago. Fosun’s latest bid, joined by Brazilian investor Nelson Tanure, on Monday was 23.50 euros per share, valuing the holiday group at 890 million euros.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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