MACROECONOMICS
UK employment slows
Growth in the number of people on British companies’ payrolls last month slowed to 0.8 percent from 1.1 percent in February, preliminary tax data that have been released earlier than usual to give a clearer sense of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic showed. “These experimental statistics show a softening picture in March, but cover the month as a whole, including the period before the coronavirus restrictions were in place,” Office for National Statistics official David Freeman said. The agency also reported a 12,100 monthly increase in the number of unemployment benefit claims last month, far below the median forecast of 172,500 in a Reuters poll of economists.
AUTOMAKERS
PSA vehicle sales fall 30%
French automaker PSA Group — owner of the Peugeot, Citroen and Opel brands — yesterday said it sold nearly 30 percent fewer vehicles during the first quarter of this year, as lockdowns due to the pandemic kept consumers away. The group suffered a less severe drop in revenue, which fell 15.6 percent to 15.2 billion euros (US$16.5 billion). The automaker sold 627,000 vehicles in the first quarter, compared with nearly 886,000 vehicles a year earlier. The second quarter is likely to be much more difficult for the automaker as lockdowns across Europe, its major market, have hobbled production and sales across the region this month. PSA now expects Europe’s auto market to shrink 25 percent this year.
BANKING
BOJ expects rising bad loans
Japanese lenders must brace for rising bad-loan costs and investment losses even as the financial system shows resilience to the COVID-19-fueled economic slump, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) said yesterday. If the downturn is prolonged, more companies at home and abroad could face solvency problems, raising credit costs, it said in its semi-annual Financial System Report. Losses on banks’ securities investment “could deteriorate” due to financial market moves, and foreign currency funding might become destabilized, it said.
GAMING
Components limit Switch
Nintendo Co has asked its partners to increase Switch production to sate a surge in global demand during the pandemic, but a lack of key components, such as memory, might curtail efforts to boost output. The Kyoto-based company has instructed suppliers to meet a revised forecast for 22 million units in the fiscal year ending March 2021, people familiar with the matter said. That is about the same level as the previous year, but up from expectations of a slight decrease in production of the three-year-old console.
SOFTWARE
SAP co-CEO stepping down
German software giant SAP AG co-CEO Jennifer Morgan is stepping down after just six months in the job, as the company switches back to a solo boss to steer it through the pandemic. Morgan, 48, became the first woman to head a company listed on Frankfurt’s DAX 30 index when she was appointed co-CEO, alongside Christian Klein, in October last year. “More than ever, the current environment requires companies to take swift, determined action which is best supported by a very clear leadership structure,” SAP said in a statement on Monday. In a decision it said was “mutually agreed” with the supervisory board, Morgan is to leave on Thursday next week, while Klein stays on as sole CEO.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
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