GERMANY
Economy powers ahead
The economy powered ahead in the third quarter, underpinning a recovery in the eurozone. GDP rose 0.8 percent in the July to September period after increasing 0.6 percent in the previous three months, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said yesterday. That was the fastest pace in three quarters and well above the 0.6 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey. Output expanded 2.8 percent from the previous year when adjusted for working days. The report confirmed the Bundesbank’s forecast that the economy carried its strong growth momentum into the second half, putting it on course for its best performance since 2011 and potentially straining up against its maximum capacity. As the eurozone’s largest economy, that expansion is bolstering the currency bloc’s upturn and supporting the global outlook. Growth in the third quarter was driven by exports and capital investment, the statistics office said. Net trade made a positive contribution to GDP and spending on equipment was especially strong.
RETAILERS
Tesco deal wins approval
Tesco PLC yesterday won provisional approval for its ￡3.7 billion (US$4.9 billion) takeover of wholesaler Booker Group PLC from the UK competition regulator, moving Britain’s biggest retailer closer to securing a new avenue of growth. The Competition and Markets Authority said it had conducted an in-depth review and provisionally concluded that Tesco’s purchase of Booker does not raise competition concerns. Most analysts had expected that Tesco would have to agree store disposals to gain clearance. Both Tesco and Booker, the nation’s biggest grocery wholesaler, welcomed the announcement. Tesco said it expects to complete the deal, which also requires shareholder approval, early next year. The authority said it found that Tesco as a retailer and Booker as a wholesaler supplying caterers and independent retailers do not compete in most of their activities.
HEALTHCARE
Digital pill approved in US
US regulators have approved the first digital pill with an embedded sensor to track if patients are taking their medication properly, marking a significant step forward in the convergence of healthcare and technology. The medicine is a version of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co Ltd’s established drug Abilify for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression, containing a tracking device developed by Proteus Digital Health. The system offers doctors an objective way to measure if patients are swallowing their pills on schedule, opening up a new avenue for monitoring medicine compliance that could be applied in other therapeutic areas. Otsuka shares yesterday rose 2.5 percent after news of the US Food and Drug Administration approval late on Monday. The agency said that being able to track ingestion of medicines prescribed for mental illness might be useful “for some patients,” although the ability of the digital pill to improve patient compliance had not been proved.
ELECTRONICS
Toshiba to sell TV business
Struggling Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp yesterday said it has decided to sell its television business to China’s Hisense Group (海信) as part of its efforts to restore its balance sheet. Toshiba agreed with the Chinese group to sell a 95 percent stake of its Toshiba Visual Solutions unit for about ￥12.9 billion (US$114 million), it said in a statement. “Toshiba has been considering structural reforms that will... strengthen Toshiba’s financial base,” the firm said.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
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