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.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
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