AUTOMAKERS
Union members detained
A Russian union official said on Monday that 15 members had been briefly detained by police as tensions rose in disputes involving Volkswagen and Peugeot factories. Dmitry Trudovoi of the MPRA union said the 15 were detained on Saturday while meeting at the union’s office, were held for about two hours and questioned about union activities by police from an “anti-extremism” unit. Police were quoted by Russia’s Interfax agency as saying that 12 activists were held as part of an investigation into a theft near the union office.
AUTOMAKERS
GM to pay compensation
Chevrolet, part of General Motors Co (GM) of the US, was on Monday ordered to pay its French dealers nearly 8 million euros (US$8.5 million) in compensation by a Paris court for the “brutal” withdrawal of its brand from Europe. GM announced in December 2013 that it was withdrawing Chevrolets this year due to poor sales. Seventeen dealers had claimed damages of 33 million euros, after alleging that Chevrolet France had put pressure on dealerships that did not accept their initial offer of compensation.
RETAILERS
H&M profit beats estimates
Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) AB, Europe’s second-largest clothing retailer, reported a first-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates as the company extended its offering of sportswear, shoes and beauty products. Net income rose 36 percent to 3.61 billion kronor (US$423 million) in the three months ending on Feb. 28, the Stockholm-based company said in a statement yesterday. The average of 16 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg was for 3.32 billion kronor. H&M also said sales in the first three weeks of this month rose 9 percent in local currency terms.
BANKING
Deutsche Bank in rate probe
Deutsche Bank is under investigation in New York state for rigging the LIBOR interest rate, a person familiar with the probe said on Monday. Germany’s largest bank is suspected of having participated with other banks in a “vast manipulation of LIBOR,” the person said. The probe is led by Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of financial services in New York state. The information about Lawsky’s probe was first reported by the Financial Times on Monday.
INTERNET
New suffixes snapped up
The singer Taylor Swift, Microsoft Corp and Harvard University were among those buying up .porn and .adult Web suffixes as a pre-emptive move before the domain names become available this summer. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is making Internet address suffixes beyond the usual .com or .org available for people and businesses to use. According to the site, Microsoft has bought not only Microsoft.porn but Office.porn and Office.adult as well. Representatives for Taylor Swift, Microsoft and Harvard could not immediately be reached for comment.
INTERNET
Instagram releases new app
Instagram on Monday released a standalone application that makes it easy to create collages of iPhone pictures. Features of the new application by the Facebook-owned smartphone photo sharing service include the ability to automatically find pictures containing faces and the option to share the collages on Facebook as well as on Instagram.
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
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
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
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
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