MEXICO
Economy could contract 4%
The government forecast the economy could contract by as much as 3.9 percent this year, but predicted a rebound next year to as much as 3.5 percent growth, the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday in an annual economic report used to guide the budget. “The economic forecast under the current circumstances has a high level of uncertainty amid the complexity of the [coronavirus] epidemic, making it difficult to establish a specific growth forecast for the domestic economy,” it said. The government put an upper limit for this year’s growth forecast of 0.1 percent. It also forecast that annual inflation would reach 3.5 percent at the end of the year, before coming down to 3.2 percent next year.
REAL ESTATE
UK market at standstill
Britain’s housing market is grinding to a halt after the government’s shutdown of much of the economy, cutting short a nascent recovery that saw prices rise at their strongest pace in more than two years last month, mortgage lender Nationwide said yesterday. Prices grew by 3 percent compared with March last year, their biggest rise since January 2018 and stronger than a median forecast for a 2 percent increase in a Reuters poll of economists. House prices in London rose by an annual 1 percent in the first quarter of this year after 10 consecutive quarters of declines, Nationwide said.
ENERGY
Whiting officers get bonuses
Whiting Petroleum Corp’s board approved US$14.6 million in cash bonuses for top executives days before the shale oil producer filed for bankruptcy. Chief executive officer Brad Holly is to collect US$6.4 million of the total, to be “paid immediately,” the company said in a filing on Wednesday. Four other executives, including chief financial officer Correne Loeffler, are to receive the rest. Whiting, one of the biggest producers in North Dakota’s Bakken formation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday after the plunge in oil prices left it unable to pay its debts. Its board approved the bonuses on Thursday last week.
E-COMMERCE
Amazon wins trademark suit
Amazon.com Inc is not liable for unwittingly stocking trademark infringing goods for third-party sellers, Europe’s top court said yesterday, handing the US online retail giant victory in its battle against cosmetics company Coty Inc. Amazon found itself in a German court after Coty said it breached its trademark rights by stocking its Davidoff perfume for third-party sellers and should be held responsible for such practices. The German court sought guidance from the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the EU, which backed the US company.
TELECOMS
T-Mobile merger complete
US operators T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp finally merged on Wednesday, the companies said, bringing an end to two years of negotiations as the pair aimed to create a giant capable of competing with the sector’s leading players. The combined firm would have more than 100 million customers, claiming the scale to compete with larger wireless rivals Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc. They said the combined company would operate under the name T-Mobile. The new company has promised to provide 5G to 99 percent of the US population within six years.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to