AUTOMAKERS
EU opens antitrust probe
The European Commission is investigating five carmakers including Renault SA and Peugeot-maker PSA Group for possible antitrust violations on car parts, German weekly Der Spiegel reported, without saying where it obtained the information. Nissan Motor Co, Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV are also being investigated, the report said. The probe centers around whether the companies colluded to raise prices by as much as 25 percent on car parts with the help of consulting firm Accenture.
ITALY
Fitch maintains rating
Italy’s sovereign credit rating was left unchanged at two notches above junk by Fitch Ratings, which said that an extremely high level of general government debt and the absence of structural fiscal adjustment still pose risks. The level was confirmed at “BBB,” while the outlook was maintained at negative. Fitch forecasts GDP growth of 0.3 percent this year, down from 0.8 percent last year, with investment growth falling to 0.4 percent from 3.8 percent last year. It expects an increase in the general government deficit to 2.3 percent of GDP this year, from 1.9 percent last year.
TECHNOLOGY
Twitter cofounder departs
Twitter Inc cofounder and former chief executive Evan Williams is stepping down from the board, leaving the one-to-many messaging service to focus on “other projects,” the firm said. Williams is to depart the Twitter board at the end of this week, Twitter said in a filing on Friday. Williams ceded his role as chief executive to Dick Costolo in 2010.
ENRON
Former CEO leaves prison
Former Enron Corp chief executive Jeffrey Skilling has been released from prison after serving 12 years for his role in a fraud scheme that sent the US energy giant into bankruptcy. The Houston Chronicle reported that Skilling, 65, was released on Thursday after completing about half of what was initially a 24-year sentence, but was reduced on appeal. Skilling was in May 2006 convicted of 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading, and ordered to forfeit about US$45 million in assets, including his home.
BANKING
EY probed over scandal
EY, the accounting firm engaged by Swedbank AB following a report that the bank was involved in money laundering, is being probed in Denmark over an Estonian dirty-money scandal surrounding Danske Bank A/S. The investigation of EY has been running since October, after Danske admitted that much of the U$230 billion that flowed through a tiny Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015 was suspicious, a Danish government spokesman said on Friday
ENGINEERING
SNC writes down oil assets
SNC-Lavalin Group Inc, a Canadian engineering and construction giant, on Friday posted a C$1.6 billion (US$1.22 billion) quarterly loss. The Montreal-based firm wrote down significant oil and gas assets and warned that its business prospects in Saudi Arabia, where it has major engineering contracts, were worsening because of a diplomatic row between Ottawa and Riyadh.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
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