BANKING
Europe in good shape
European banks are in “extremely solid” shape and their situation is not similar to that of some US lenders, Banque de France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said yesterday, amid fears of a crisis in the sector. The failure of two US lenders has raised fears of contagion to the wider sector, with troubled European banking giant Credit Suisse having to borrow up to US$54 billion from the Swiss central bank. “European banks are not in the same situation as certain American banks for a very simple reason which is that they are not subjected to the same rules,” Villeroy de Galhau told BFM Business television. Basel III rules that were set after the 2008 financial crisis to ensure that banks have adequate capital and liquidity have been “effective,” he said. Four hundred European banking groups are subject to the Basel III requirements compared with only 13 in the US, he said.
SOFTWARE
Microsoft Office goes AI
Microsoft Corp is infusing artificial intelligence (AI) tools into its Office software, including Word, Excel and Outlook. The company on Thursday said the new feature, named Copilot, is a processing engine that would allow users to do things like summarize long e-mails, draft stories in Word and animate slides in PowerPoint. Microsoft spokesperson Jessica Dash said the new Office features are currently only available for 20 enterprise customers. It will roll it out for more enterprise customers over the coming months. Microsoft is marketing the feature as a tool that would allow workers to be more productive by freeing up time they usually spend in their inbox, or allowing them to more easily analyze trends in Excel. The firm is also to add a chat function called Business Chat. It takes commands and carries out actions — such as summarizing an e-mail about a particular project to co-workers — using user data.
AVIATION
Firms look to India for talent
Boeing Co and Airbus SE are increasingly looking to India for highly skilled, low-cost engineers to meet a boom in demand for aircraft and expand their manufacturing presence in the world’s fifth-largest economy. Airbus plans to hire 1,000 people in India this year out of 13,000 globally. Boeing and its suppliers, which already employ about 18,000 workers in the nation, have been growing by about 1,500 staff every year, the US jet manufacturer’s India head Salil Gupte told Bloomberg News in an interview. With about 1.5 million engineering students graduating annually, India is a rich source of talent for planemakers facing record orders from airlines as travel surges again after the COVID-19 pandemic. Boeing can hire an engineer in Bengaluru, India, for 7 percent of the cost of a similar role in Seattle, salary data compiler Glassdoor said.
CHINA
PBOC cuts reserve ratio
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) yesterday said it would cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves to release liquidity and support the economy. The bank said it would cut the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for all banks, except those that have implemented a 5 percent reserve ratio, by 25 basis points, effective March 27. That follows a reduction of 25 basis points for all banks in December last year. The PBOC has promised to make its policy “precise and forceful” this year to support the economy, keeping liquidity reasonably ample and lowering funding costs for businesses. It said weighted average RRR for financial institutions is 7.6 percent after the latest cut.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”