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.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
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