SOUTH KOREA
Moon pledges spending
President Moon Jae-in yesterday said that the government would further boost fiscal spending if needed to increase jobs as the country deals with its worst unemployment rate in two decades. In a speech marking his fourth year in office, Moon also said policies would focus on making sure that the economy expands more than 4 percent this year, a rosier outlook than the Ministry of Finance’s forecast of 3 to 4 percent. An active stimulus approach by policymakers has produced a modest domestic recovery. The government pledged to spend about 310 trillion won (US$278 billion) of fiscal outlays through four supplementary budgets last year.
SAUDI ARABIA
Economy shrinks 3.3 percent
The economy contracted 3.3 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, but the non-oil sector — the engine of job creation — grew for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Non-oil GDP expanded 3.3 percent on an annual basis. The oil sector shrank by 12 percent, dragged down by additional crude production cuts that started in February, the General Authority for Statistics said in a statement. On a quarterly basis, the overall economy shrank 0.1 percent. The IMF expects the economy to grow 2.1 percent this year after shrinking 4.1 percent last year.
FRANCE
Full recovery next year
The economy would return to its pre-pandemic levels of activity by the first half of next year, Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire said yesterday, who also reaffirmed his target of 5 percent economic growth for this year. “Economic growth is back in the first quarter... I think we will have a strong growth in 2021,” Le Maire told France Info radio. He ruled out a second economic stimulus plan on top of a 100 billion euro (US$121 billion) economic stimulus plan. However, Le Maire added that it was fair to raise the issue of longer-term investment plans for the country.
BANKING
UBS to pay US$40k bonus
UBS Group AG is to pay a US$40,000 one-time bonus to its global banking analysts when they are promoted, doubling what some competitors are offering, as lenders seek to reward and retain younger employees weighed down by a surge in business and a prolonged work-from-home grind. Starting as soon as this month the Swiss bank is to pay the sign-on bonus to analysts promoted to associates on top of any regular salary increases, said people familiar with the move who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The amount represents about 30 percent of the annual base pay of a newly promoted associate, one of the people said.
MALAYSIA
1MDB files 22 lawsuits
State-owned investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) and a former unit have filed a combined 22 civil suits against entities and individuals for the recovery of assets worth more than US$23 billion, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. 1MDB filed six suits against nine entities, including two foreign financial institutions, and 25 individuals for various wrongdoings including fraud and conspiracy to defraud the fund, the ministry said. SRC International Sdn filed 16 suits against 15 individuals and eight entities for various wrongdoings, including abuse of power and breach of fiduciary duties in public office, the statement said.
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