UNITED KINGDOM
Jobless rate falls to 3.8%
Unemployment eased in the three months to the end of April, but wage rises continue to lag inflation, official data showed yesterday. The unemployment rate decreased to 3.8 percent from 3.9 percent in the three months to the end of March, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement. “While there has been another drop in the number of people neither working nor looking for work ... those outside the jobs market due to long-term sickness continues to rise, to a new record,” ONS Economic Statistics Director Darren Morgan said. Morgan said the number of people in work had past its pre-COVID-19-pandemic level for the first time, setting a new high. “The biggest driver in recent jobs growth ... is health and social care, followed by hospitality,” he said.
BEVERAGES
Pernod to buy Ace stake
Pernod Ricard agreed to buy a majority stake in Canada’s Ace Beverage Group as the maker of Absolut Vodka and Jameson Irish Whiskey looks to boost its position in the growing category of pre-mixed cocktails. Pernod’s Canadian affiliate Corby Spirit and Wine is to acquire a 90 percent stake in the closely held Ace at an enterprise value of C$165 million (US$124 million), Pernod said in a statement yesterday. Ace’s flagship brand Cottage Springs is the leading ready-to-drink brand in Ontario, Pernod said, with products that include Cottage Springs Vodka Soda and Tequila Soda. The segment, which includes hard seltzers, is expected to grow 8 percent between last year and 2026, reaching a value of US$11.6 billion across major markets, drinks market analysis firm IWSR has said.
SECURITY
Thales to buy Tesserent
Thales SA has signed an agreement to acquire Australian cybersecurity firm Tesserent Ltd, the French defense contractor announced yesterday. “This acquisition would enable Thales to accelerate its cybersecurity development road map and expand its footprint in Australia and New Zealand,” Thales said in a statement. With 500 employees and turnover last year of A$185 million (US$125 million), Tesserent is one of Australia and New Zealand’s largest cybersecurity companies, it said. “Together we will address the growing cyber needs in our country, including those of the Australian government and defense sectors,” Tesserent CEO Kurt Hansen said in the statement. The proposed acquisition is subject to approval by shareholders, the Australian federal court and the usual regulatory approvals. The transaction is expected to be finalized during the second half of this year, Thales said.
TECHNOLOGY
India ‘threatened’ Twitter
India threatened to shut Twitter down unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts, cofounder Jack Dorsey said in an interview with YouTube news show Breaking Points. Dorsey, who quit as Twitter CEO in 2021, on Monday said that India threatened the company with a shutdown and raids on employees if it did not comply with government requests to take down posts and restrict accounts that were critical of the government over protests by farmers in 2020 and 2021. The Indian government has repeatedly denied engaging in online censorship, and Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar yesterday said that Dorsey’s assertions were an “outright lie.”
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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