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Former Burberry executive Jean Gasnier joins as director of new business, while Claudie Pierlot executive Alain Cheung takes over as digital and omnichannel director.

PARIS — Printemps Group, parent company of the famed Paris department store Printemps, has added two executives to its management committee.

Former Burberry and La Perla executive Jean Gasnier will come on board as managing director of new business, while Alain Cheung, most recently director of digital and customer relationship management at SMCP’s Claudie Pierlot brand, will join as managing director of digital and omnichannel.

“After an intense three-year transformation plan, we wish to mark a new phase for the Printemps Group aimed at developing large scale and long-term initiatives,” said Printemps chief executive officer Jean-Marc Bellaiche. “The quality and in-depth knowledge of their respective profiles complement the richness of our management committee.”

Gasnier steps up to the role from the marketing, digital and omnichannel director position at Citadium, Printemps Group’s urban fashion brand, a post he held for five years. Prior to Citadium, Gasnier served as e-commerce and digital marketing director for La Perla and digital director at Elite Model Management. He also spent several years at Burberry, where he began as a digital business analyst before moving into the business architecture manager spot.

Joining from Pierlot, Cheung was previously European e-commerce director at Zadig & Voltaire. He held successive positions in the e-commerce department of French multibrand jewelry and watch retailer Cleor, reaching the post of e-commerce director. He also worked at French retail e-commerce solutions partner The Oz, and as a project manager at Meninvest Group, which holds a portfolio of men’s brands.

Under Bellaiche, Printemps is undergoing an ambitious overhaul to reinvigorate the historical French department store with experiential retail and a start-up approach. To that end, the group has added elements such as branded pop-up cafés, and opened a podcast studio in its Paris flagship.

The Printemps Group operates 19 department stores in France and opened its first international branch in Doha, Qatar, in November as part of its expansion plan. It plans to open an NYC outpost at One Wall Street in early 2024.

Printemps Group is also parent company to Citadium, the Place des Tendances fashion and beauty e-commerce site, as well as Made in Design, a furniture and decor e-commerce site.

No matter what happens with TSMC's high-profile facility in Phoenix, many cutting-edge chips it produces for Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Tesla will still require assembly in Taiwan

In December last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook traveled to Phoenix, stood with President Joe Biden in front of a high-profile factory Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. was constructing and said the facility would produce chips for the iPhone maker. The comments seemed to commit Apple to aid Biden’s goal of lessening reliance on foreign chipmaking facilities—namely in Taiwan, which has been under threat of a takeover or blockade by China.

But Cook avoided speaking an uncomfortable truth: The Arizona factory—which has been a focal point of the Biden plan and will cost $40 billion to build—will do little to make the U.S. self-reliant in chips. That’s because many advanced chips made in Arizona for Apple or other customers such as Nvidia, AMD and Tesla will still require assembly in Taiwan in a process known as packaging, according to interviews with multiple TSMC engineers and former Apple employees.

THE TAKEAWAY

• High-profile plant in Arizona won’t change Apple’s dependency on Taiwan

• iPhone and Nvidia H100 chips depend on Taiwan for final assembly

• TSMC has no plans to build an advanced packaging facility in the U.S.

TSMC has no plans to build a packaging facility in Arizona or elsewhere in the U.S., mainly due to the high costs associated with such a project, the TSMC employees said.

The revelation shows how TSMC’s Arizona facility—which will employ 4,500 people across two factories when it begins mass production in 2025—may serve to score political points but doesn’t reduce America’s reliance on Taiwan.

“The TSMC Arizona fab is effectively a paperweight in any geopolitical tension or war [with China over Taiwan] due to the fact that it still requires sending the chips back to Taiwan for packaging,” said Dylan Patel, chief analyst at SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor research firm.

TSMC’s inability to fully assemble chips for Apple and others in the U.S. shows how difficult it will be for Biden to bring chip manufacturing to the U.S. without completely reshaping the entire supply chain for semiconductors, which is heavily concentrated in Asia. Taiwan occupies an especially important position in the field and is a major reason the West is concerned about China’s repeated threats to take over or blockade the island territory, which has long operated independently.

Cook has said Apple would be TSMC’s largest customer at the Arizona facility but hasn’t specified which chips would be made there or how many. Packaging for the companies’ less important chips, including those for the iPad and MacBooks, could be handled outside Taiwan.

Nvidia, AMD and Tesla also plan to use the Arizona facility to make chips, though they haven’t indicated which ones either. But their most advanced chips for artificial intelligence—including Nvidia’s coveted H100 chip—still rely on packaging techniques that TSMC only does in Taiwan, TSMC employees say. TSMC is spending billions of dollars to expand its capacity for packaging these chips in Taiwan in response to exploding demand for AI computing.

Spokespeople for Apple, Nvidia and TSMC declined to comment. Tesla CEO Elon Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘Huge Expenditure’

When or whether TSMC will bring cutting-edge chip packaging to the U.S. is a matter that depends on cost. TSMC’s factories in Arizona won’t produce enough chips to justify the price of building an advanced packaging facility there, said Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China at consultancy DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.

“Building this type of facility is a huge expenditure of [capital], time, and effort, and it does not seem likely that TSMC will want to do this anytime soon in the desert in Arizona, particularly given all the problems the firm has encountered with construction, costs and personnel so far,” he said.

Those problems prompted TSMC to push back the start date by a year, to 2025, after it said in July it was struggling to find enough skilled workers to construct the facility.

Chip analysts such as Triolo, as well as industry groups such as the Institute of Printed Circuits, have said Washington hasn’t done enough to encourage companies involved in packaging to move operations to the U.S., where only 3% of the world’s advanced packaging occurs.

The U.S. government is aware of the advanced packaging gap. The Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act, a law the U.S. passed last year to earmark roughly $52 billion in subsidies for chip firms that build factories in the U.S., called for the creation of a National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program. That program will receive at least $2.5 billion in funding from the CHIPS Act this year, which IPC said showed that packaging is “not being clearly prioritized.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Commerce, which played a key role in creating the CHIPS Act, wouldn’t comment on potential applicants seeking funding for advanced packaging facilities but pointed to a February speech by Secretary Gina Raimondo in which she said the U.S. will develop multiple high-volume advanced packaging facilities and become a global leader in the field.

But without considerably more subsidies, it isn’t clear how advanced packaging firms would be able to justify the high costs of building facilities in the U.S. versus in Asia, Triolo said.

Chip packaging involves encapsulating the die in protective materials and placing a chip’s components as close together as possible to reduce the distance signals must travel between them. Cutting-edge packaging has become important for boosting a chip’s performance as the industry bumps up against the physical limits of how many transistors can be etched on a chip wafer. TSMC and another Taiwanese company, ASE Group, handle a lot of the world’s most advanced packaging on the island, while Samsung Electronics has important facilities in South Korea, and Intel—a pioneer of the field—is setting up a large advanced packaging facility in Malaysia.

But the other companies can’t hold a candle to TSMC in this area. The firm initially developed the advanced packaging used by the iPhone for another customer, Qualcomm, which ultimately didn’t use the technology, according to current and former TSMC employees. Instead, Apple has been using it for the main chip in the iPhone since as early as 2016.

Today, the iPhone’s main chip still uses the advanced packaging method developed by TSMC, called Integrated Fan-out Package on Package, also referred to as InFO_PoP. The method places the iPhone’s memory on top of its processor, making the overall chip smaller and thinner to improve its power efficiency and performance.

Aerial photos of the TSMC construction site in July. Photos via YouTube/Precision Aerial Solutions

Apple’s Discount

Former Apple and TSMC employees said Apple pays a lot to use TSMC’s advanced packaging and Apple is the only customer using TSMC’s method at high volumes. (The Information previously reported that Google plans to use the same TSMC advanced packaging method for its Pixel phone chips starting in 2025.)

Still, Apple gets a significant discount on TSMC’s packaging, as it’s bundled with a commercial contract with TSMC to make processor dies, which gives Apple uniquely favorable terms, The Information previously reported. Apple also uses TSMC’s advanced packaging for the Apple Watch and its most advanced Mac desktops.

As chip packaging gets more advanced, TSMC customers such as Apple and Nvidia will find it harder to disentangle themselves from facilities in Taiwan, said Patel of SemiAnalysis. That’s because TSMC always develops its newest manufacturing and packaging processes close to home, where costs are lower and talent is easier to find.

That means TSMC’s future advanced packaging methods, which Apple is considering using, will almost certainly be offered only in Taiwan. One method Apple is evaluating for future MacBooks and Macs, Small Outline Integrated Circuit, breaks up processor dies into even smaller pieces and stacks them on top of one another, making the overall chip smaller while also increasing its performance, according to a TSMC employee with direct knowledge of the matter.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says the airport, which is less than 20 kilometers from Israel, is part of Tehran's plans to 'act against citizens of Israel'

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant revealed on Monday that Iran is building an airport in southern Lebanon, 13 miles (roughly 21 kilometers) from the border with Israel. According to Gallant, the Iranians are using this airport for terrorism.

Gallant made the revelation during a conference held in Israel's Reichman University. The defense minister showed pictures of the airfield in the vicinity of Jabal Qalaat Jabbour, adding that "you can see the flag of Iran [near] the runways, from which the Ayatollah's regime plans to act against citizens of Israel."

"Today, Iran is the biggest threat against the State of Israel, regional stability and the world order" Gallant said, "Iran is striving to attain military nuclear capabilities and is closer than ever."

Pricing could land towards the top end of the initial price range of $47-$51 a share

The banks underwriting Arm’s $50bn listing will close orders for shares a day earlier than planned owing to strong demand for the biggest initial public offering in nearly two years.

People familiar with the matter said the IPO for the UK-based chip designer, which is more than five times oversubscribed, will close on Tuesday, instead of Wednesday as previously intended.

They added that shares in Arm were still expected to be priced on Wednesday, and could land towards the top end of the initial range of $47-$51 a share or even higher than that.

At the top end of the current range, the IPO would raise $4.9bn for Arm’s parent SoftBank and value the company at $54.5bn, on a fully diluted basis. The people cautioned on Monday that the price was still to be set.

Arm declined to comment.

Strong demand from investors for Arm’s listing has helped to crack open the window for listings in the US after a dearth of such deals this year, encouraging other companies to pursue a public offering.

On Monday, the San Francisco-based ecommerce company Instacart announced its price range for an IPO that would raise up to $616mn. On a fully diluted basis, if all stock options and other rights are exercised, the IPO would value Instacart at up to $9.3bn, less than a quarter of its private valuation two years ago.

Marketing automation company Klaviyo also announced its IPO pricing on Monday. It said it would sell 19.2mn shares at a range of $25 to $27 a share. This would value the company at up to $6.3bn. It was last valued at $9.5bn.

Arm’s current owner, SoftBank, plans to sell about 10 per cent of its stake in the company via a Nasdaq listing. It had originally hoped the deal would value Arm at as much as $70bn.

Despite reporting flat sales in its most recent financial year, Cambridge-based Arm has forecast accelerating revenue growth boosted by the artificial intelligence boom.

Demand for its shares has held up in spite of some investors’ concerns about a drop in profits in Arm’s most recent quarter and the company’s exposure to multiple risks in China.

Arm’s core market of smartphone chips has stagnated this year but it is hoping for growth from artificial intelligence and data centre customers, despite playing only a peripheral role in the technology required to build the kinds of large language models that power ChatGPT and other generative AI systems.

“AI is going to be everywhere and it all runs on Arm,” Rene Haas, the SoftBank-owned chip designer’s chief executive, told prospective investors in a pitch video seen by the Financial Times.

Agreement comes as Apple has been trying to build its own modem chips to stop using Qualcomm’s

Qualcomm QCOM 3.40%increase; green up pointing triangle reached a three-year deal with Apple AAPL -0.04%decrease; red down pointing triangle to supply the iPhone maker with 5G communications chips, the latest sign that Apple’s effort to make them in-house has yet to bear fruit.

The deal might indicate that Apple’s long-running effort to develop its own modems isn’t making its way into the company’s flagship phones any time soon. Apple bought Intel’s smartphone-modem business in 2019 for $1 billion, bringing on some 2,200 staff members and a portfolio of patents. Intel also had struggled to develop 5G modems and had been losing around $1 billion a year on the operation.

Qualcomm said Monday it would supply Apple with the modem chips for smartphone launches in 2024, 2025 and 2026, in a deal with terms similar to a previous arrangement between the companies.

Qualcomm shares rose 4.1% to $110.52 in early trading. Prior to Monday, the company’s stock had fallen by 20% in the past year amid dropping demand for smartphones. Qualcomm didn’t say how much its newest deal with Apple was worth. Apple shares were up 47 cents to $178.61 in early trading Monday.

Past supply deals have been lucrative for Qualcomm and expensive for Apple. Sales of modems to Apple were about $7.26 billion in Qualcomm’s last fiscal year, or about 16% of its overall revenue, according to a UBS estimate from last month.

Apple has a long record of developing its own technology and reducing its reliance on outside chip vendors. In 2010, it launched its first processing chip for its iPad and iPhone products. Over the years, these internally built mobile chips have helped Apple gain an edge over its Android phone rivals in performance and battery life. Android phones mostly rely on the same third-party chip vendors such as Qualcomm and Taiwan-based MediaTek.

In 2020, Apple began producing its own laptop processors, pushing out longtime Mac chip partner Intel. The processing speed boost and long battery life provided by the Apple chips rebooted its flagging Mac business and helped it gain share over Microsoft Windows-based PCs.

Communications chips that capture real-world signals and translate them into data and voice calls at superfast speeds are notoriously difficult to develop, and there are only a handful of companies in the world able to make them. They include Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung.

Qualcomm and Apple have had an uneasy relationship in the past decade, including an extended legal fight over Qualcomm’s supply of chips to Apple. Apple alleged that Qualcomm required it to pay excessive patent-royalty fees to purchase the essential chips.

The companies settled their differences in 2019, reaching a long-term patent-licensing deal and a supply agreement. The licensing deal, which lasts through April 2025 and is extendible for another two years, isn’t changed by the companies’ new supply agreement, Qualcomm said.

Following the 2019 deal with Apple, Qualcomm assumed that it would supply only 20% of the modems in Apple smartphones launching this year as Apple worked on its replacement.

In November of last year, however, Qualcomm chief financial officer Akash Palkhiwala said it expected the “vast majority” of the 2023 phones would contain its chips.

With the new deal, Qualcomm is making a similar assumption that sales to Apple will tail off. It is expecting it will supply only 20% of the modem chips for Apple’s phones in 2026.

Deal comes hours before the first ‘Monday Night Football’ of the NFL season is to air on ESPN

Disney DIS 2.12%increase; green up pointing triangle and Charter Communications CHTR 2.06%increase; green up pointing triangle have reached an agreement that will restore popular channels including ESPN and ABC to the cable operator’s nearly 15 million subscribers, people familiar with the matter said, ending a blackout that lasted for more than a week.

The media glitz of top car shows has faded, but the format has staying power as a marketing event for consumers with cash to spend

“International” car shows have a more national flavor these days, but that doesn’t mean the format is dying.

The North American International Auto Show launches this week in Detroit, hot on the heels of IAA Mobility in Germany last week. These were traditionally among the “big five” global car shows alongside those in Paris, Geneva and Tokyo, before the pandemic broke a tradition already under strain. IAA relocated from Frankfurt to Munich in 2021 with a broader pitch around “mobility” to appease the anti-car lobby, while there hasn’t been an auto show in Geneva since the lockdowns.

Car shows can only really rely on their home team to show up these days, let alone create a buzz with new models. Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz attended IAA in force, taking over the squares of central Munich and showcasing their flagship projects. But most American and Japanese car brands, and even some other European ones, stayed away. Only Chinese vehicles were there in greater force: The likes of BYD are new to the European market and need to make a splash.

The home bias will be even more pronounced in Detroit. Of the 15 brands due to host their own displays, just five originated overseas: Toyota, Lexus, Kia, Fiat and Volkswagen. Europe’s luxury names will be represented by dealers, and in BMW’s case also on an indoor electric-vehicle test track.

Toyota is saving its big reveals for the Tokyo show, which starts in October. Underlining the role of national champions in keeping big shows alive, the Geneva event has struggled to bounce back because Switzerland doesn’t have a car industry. In commerce as in war, the country’s unique selling point was that it was neutral territory.

Perhaps the most international show this year was Shanghai in April, not one of the traditional big five. The rapid advances China has made with electric vehicles were one reason executives turned up from all over the world. Less repeatable, though, was the timing of China’s post-Covid reopening: Foreign executives had spent the previous three years trying to understand the world’s largest car market through a computer.

“We even had virtual test drives—people driving vehicles for us and I was watching it on the screen,” said Mercedes-Benz Chief Executive Ola Källenius, recalling the challenges of the pandemic era.

The sheer physicality of cars will ensure a future for auto shows: The digital experience isn’t enough. As manufacturers look for savings wherever they can to fund their transition to electric vehicles, though, it will likely be a more modest future. Following the pandemic, brands seem to be focusing limited budgets on their home show and countries where they have big growth plans.

In the U.S., this could take the show back to its roots as a forum for potential buyers to check out new models in their local city. This consumer side of the car-show business was steady before the pandemic, even as companies were already questioning the high cost of competing for glamour at media-focused international events.

Foresight Research, which collects data on U.S. car shows, estimates that about 6.5 million households—one in 20—attended them in the last full season before the lockdowns. The season that ran through the spring of 2023 was still affected by health concerns, with just 4.7 million homes attending. Yet three-quarters of those households intended to buy a car within the next year, according to Foresight co-founder Chris Stommel, making it a powerful marketing channel.

To improve their margins, traditional automakers increasingly want to follow Tesla’s lead in selling cars directly online. If it takes off, this trend could magnify the importance of car shows, where consumers and their social-media influencers have a rare opportunity to sit inside a variety of vehicles all in one place.

As it moves into the mass market, Tesla itself is attending the Detroit show this year for the first time since 2015, by participating in the EV test track and offering street rides. This might be a sign of where things are headed.

In a more digital, budget-conscious auto industry, the car show will go on—just in a lower key.