The European Commission yesterday gave the green light to 7 billion euros (US$7.7 billion) in French state aid to national carrier Air France to cushion the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The European Commission has approved, under EU State aid rules, a 7 billion euros French aid measure consisting of a state guarantee on loans and a shareholder loan to Air France to provide urgent liquidity to the company in the context of the coronavirus outbreak,” EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
The EU’s executive body, the bloc’s competition watchdog, loosened its rules on state subsidies in the middle of March to make it easier for member countries to come to the aid of companies in financial difficulty as a result of the pandemic.
In the case of Air France, the aid consists of 4 billion euros in bank loans, 90 percent guaranteed by the state, and 3 billion euros in direct state loans in return for which the airline has committed to improving its profitability and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.
BANKRUPTCY RISKS
“France has demonstrated that all other potential means to obtain liquidity on the markets have already been explored and exhausted,” the commission said.
“In the absence of the public support, Air France would likely face the risk of bankruptcy due to the sudden erosion of its business. This would likely cause severe harm to the French economy,” the commission added.
As a result of the imposition of travel restrictions introduced by France and by many destination countries to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, Air France has suffered a significant reduction of its services, which resulted in high operating losses.
KLM AID
France and the Netherlands each hold about 14 percent of the Air France-KLM group.
The Dutch government, for its part, plans to give 2 billion to 4 billion euros in state aid to KLM in the form of loans and guarantees.
Meanwhile, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, the region’s biggest carrier, is working on a rescue from Germany and other countries, and Italy wants to take over bankrupt Alitalia SpA.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts