Insurer buys in to Taiwan firm
Millea Holdings Inc., formed from the merger of Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Co and Nichido Fire & Marine Insurance Co, will pay NT$960 million ($28 million) for a 30 percent stake in Taiwan's fourth-biggest car insurer.
Millea will buy the stake in Newa Insurance Co (新安產險) from Yulon Group (裕隆集團), a closely held company that also controls Taiwan's second-biggest automaker, as part of its plans to expand in Asia, Millea said in a faxed statement.
Yulon owns Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車), which makes Nissan Motor Co cars in Taiwan.
First Commercial Bank (第一銀行), Taiwan's largest publicly traded lender by assets, also plans to invest in Newa, Millea said in its statement. First Commercial spokesman Chang Yi-hsiung (張義雄) declined to comment on the stake size.
Profits rise for phone company
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan's largest telecom company with 7.3 million customers, said Thursday its net profit in the nine months to September rose 30 percent due to cost cutting in the face of falling revenue.
The state-owned telecom company which enjoys 32 percent market share in Taiwan, reported that the net profit of NT$37.02 billion was the result of a 15.8 percent reduction in costs from the same period a year earlier. Sales fell 4.78 percent to NT$131.95 billion, it added.
Banking laws revised
Vice Minister of Finance Gordon Chen (陳樹) yesterday told a legislative committee that the Ministry of Finance has completed revisions to the Banking Law (銀行法), proposing to toughen criminal penalties against offenders of financial crimes.
A maximum penalty of 25-year jail term will be imposed on financial criminals according to the new revision, he said.
The law currently stipulates that a minimum jail term of 7 years and a maximum of 15 years should be the penalty.
To reinforce the government's crackdown on financial crimes, the vice minister added that the ministry is expected to submit all revisions of finance-related laws to the legislature for further review by the year's end.
Siliconware turns a profit
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密), the world's third-largest chip packager, turned a third-quarter profit as sales surged.
The company posted a net income of NT$35 million, compared with a net loss of NT$161 million a year earlier. Sales, posted earlier, rose 45 percent to NT$5.5 billion.
The company cut its net income forecast 63 percent to NT$404 million. Siliconware on Friday slashed its 2002 pretax profit forecast 67 percent to NT$304.7 million after semiconductor demand slowed.
The company had a NT$1.18 billion net loss in 2001.
Taiwan Dollar Gains
The Taiwan dollar had its strongest close in six weeks on speculation of exporter demand for the currency as exporting companies bring home overseas earnings to meet a month-end bookkeeping deadline.
The New Taiwan dollar gained NT$0.049 to close at NT$34.761 against its US counterpart, the highest closing level since Sept. 19, on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$439 million, compared with the previous day's US$359 million.
A report tomorrow that's expected to show unemployment in the US rose in October, underscoring a slowdown in economic growth, may also weaken the US currency against the Taiwan unit, said Daphne Hsu, a currency trader at The Chinese Bank (中華銀行).
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy