SWEDEN
GDP could retreat by 4%
GDP is seen shrinking 4 percent this year as the economy slumps due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a plunge rivaling that experienced during the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, Minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson said yesterday. “We have a very serious economic situation, both in Sweden and globally,” she told reporters. “This is both a demand and supply shock that is spreading between countries.” The economy shrank 4.2 percent in 2009 from the previous year, the biggest decline in more than 50 years.
PUBLISHING
Gannett plans furloughs
Gannett Co, the largest US newspaper publisher, on Monday said that it was making unspecified furloughs and pay cuts for its staff in the latest sign of media turmoil from the coronavirus pandemic. A memo from Gannett chief executive officer Paul Bascobert said that he would forgo his salary and the executive team would take a 25 percent pay cut as part of the belt-tightening at the group, which includes the daily USA Today. The company declined to offer specifics on the cuts.
MARKETING
US firms halt salaries
On Monday, three days after US President Donald Trump signed a US$2 trillion stimulus into law, Kohl’s Corp, Macy’s Inc and Gap Inc joined a growing number of retailers in halting pay for much of their workforce, while preserving some benefits. With these furloughs, that brings the total number of employees who are out of a paycheck at major US chains to more than 500,000, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. The coronavirus outbreak caused initial jobless benefit claims to hit 3.3 million last week.
MARKETING
WPP pulls dividend, buyback
WPP PLC, the world’s biggest advertising company, said that it was pulling its dividend and share buyback, and withdrawing its guidance for this year after it saw an increasing number of cancellations from clients due to the coronavirus crisis. The group, which has sold multiple assets as part of a program to simplify the business, said that it had cash of ￡3 billion (US$3.7 billion) and total liquidity, including undrawn credit facilities, of ￡4.8 billion. It has also launched a review of its costs to protect profitability from a fall in revenue.
ENERGY
BP not retrenching staff
Oil major BP PLC would not cut jobs over the next three months, chief executive officer Bernard Looney said, even as the company seeks to reduce spending following an oil price crash. Looney on Friday wrote in a LinkedIn post that while there has been reduced demand for the industry’s products, the company’s response to the crisis “will not include making any BP staff redundant over the next three months.” London-based BP employs 73,000 people across several countries.
AUTOMAKERS
Hyundai plans trial center
Hyundai Motor Co is setting up an innovation center in Singapore to develop and test technology across the automotive supply chain, including trialing the manufacturing process for electric vehicles. Construction of the facility in Jurong Innovation District would be completed in the second half of 2022, the Seoul-based automaker said in a statement yesterday. The center would focus on future concepts that could be used globally, said Hyundai Motor, which is spending 20 trillion won (US$16 billion) by 2025 on new technology.
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
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a
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