AUTOMAKERS
European sales rise again
Auto sales in Europe last month rose for a ninth straight month as supply chains improved and automakers worked through backlogs of orders. New vehicle registrations increased 16 percent to 964,932, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association said yesterday. While the recovery continues, deliveries during the first four months of the year remain roughly one-fifth below pre-COVID-19 levels. Automakers across the volume, premium and luxury segments have continued to post better results even as inflation remains elevated and concerns about the economic outlook deepen. Fully electric vehicles saw a nearly 50 percent increase in registrations compared with April last year, while sales of gas-fueled vehicles rose 15 percent. Orders for diesel-powered vehicles declined slightly.
BANKING
Commerzbank profit jumps
Germany’s second-biggest lender Commerzbank AG yesterday said that its net profit almost doubled in the first quarter, thanks to “a tailwind” from higher interest rates. The group said it made a bottom-line profit of 580 million euros (US$627.6 million), compared with 298 million euros over the same period a year earlier. Quarterly revenues fell slightly to just under 2.7 billion euros, from 2.8 billion euros a year earlier, Commerzbank said. The dip was partly due to charges set aside to cover legal costs at its Polish unit mBank, the lender said. “We had a very good start to 2023,” Commerzbank CEO Manfred Knof said in a statement. Looking ahead, the lender said it is aiming for a full-year net profit “well above that of 2022.”
PHARMACEUTICALS
FTC aims to halt Amgen bid
US regulators on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to block biopharmaceutical firm Amgen Inc’s proposed US$28 billion takeover of drugmaker Horizon Therapeutics PLC, saying that the transaction would harm consumers. In a suit filed in federal court, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said the deal would enable Amgen to entrench the monopoly positions of Horizon medications to treat thyroid eye disease and chronic refractory gout. In addition, Amgen has a history of granting rebates on popular medications in exchange for preferential placement of other products with insurers and pharmaceutical benefit managers, the FTC said. This practice might make it difficult, if not impossible, for smaller rivals to match the level of rebates that Amgen would be able to offer, it said.
TECHNOLOGY
Musk wrong: Microsoft CEO
Microsoft Corp is not in control of OpenAI Inc, CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview on Tuesday, disputing the allegation by Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk, who had said that Microsoft was effectively in control of the start-up. Small players very much have a chance to compete against large firms such as his and Alphabet Inc’s Google, Nadella said. The Microsoft CEO said OpenAI’s board was steering the ship, contradicting Musk, who pulled out of the start-up years ago. “OpenAI is very grounded in their mission of being controlled by a nonprofit board,” Nadella said. “We have a non-controlling interest in it, we have a great commercial partnership in it.” The ability of smaller companies to break into artificial intelligence would “depend on product-market fit,” and it is not guaranteed that Microsoft and Google would be “the only two games in town,” Nadella said.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
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