Chou Chin chair Kuo resigns
Chou Chin Industrial Co (久津實業), a maker of juices, tea and coffee, said its chairman and president Kuo Bao-fu (郭保富) resigned after a report he is being probed for alleged breach of faith and failing to settle stock-trading accounts.
After a day of questioning by the Investigation Bureau, Kuo admitted yesterday embezzling NT$200 million (US$6 million) and gave the money to a person identified only as Yu, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing the bureau.
The bureau released Kuo on a NT$2 million bail yesterday to settle Chou Chin's NT$3 billion worth of loans, the newspaper also said.
The investigations came after the media reported last week investors didn't settle about NT$2 billion worth of trades, making the stock settlement default the largest in almost five years.
Yageo may post another loss
Yageo Corp (國巨), the country's biggest maker of parts used to control the flow of electricity in electronic products, will probably post its fourth straight quarterly loss because of a supply glut.
Yageo may turn to a fourth-quarter loss of NT$155.6 million (US$4.5 million) from NT$37.6 million profit a year ago, a Bloomberg survey of five analysts showed. Sales, based on monthly reports, edged up 3 percent to NT$3.7 billion. Yageo will announce results tomorrow after the stock market closes at 1:30pm.
The company, which makes capacitors and resistors for personal computers and mobile phones, forecast fourth-quarter prices will fall as much as 9 percent from the third quarter.
"There have been serious overcapacity problems," said Evelyn Ou, an analyst with Morgan Stanley & Co. "Demand has been sluggish."
Yageo in May had its credit rating cut to "twBBB-" by Taiwan Ratings Corp, four levels below investment grade. The rating covers the company's overall creditworthiness, not any particular debt issue.
Teco plans overseas acquisitions
Teco Electric & Machinery Co (東元電機), plans to buy an unidentified motor maker in the US or Europe to expand its market share in North America, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing Teco chairman Theodore Huang (黃茂雄).
The acquisition, expected to complete within six months, would raise the sales of industrial motors next year to NT$30 billion (US$866 million), the newspaper said, without giving a comparative figure.
The company also plans to buy three motor companies in China, the paper said.
Hon Hai building Hungary plant
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), is building a factory in Budapest, Hungary to meet demand for cellphones from Nokia Oyj, a Chinese-language newspaper said, without indicating where it got the information.
Hon Hai gained Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, as a customer by making cases for phones and will start to make more cellphone parts for the Finnish company, the report said.
The company is getting more orders from Nokia and other handset makers by setting up global manufacturing operations that include factories in China, the world's biggest mobile-phone market, the report said.
Hon Hai said last month's sales rose to NT$16.8 billion from NT$13.1 billion a year ago. Last year, the company's sales rose by more than four-fifths from 2001.
NT dollar strengthens
The new Taiwan dollar gained against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange Monday, adding NT$0.043 to close at NT$34.597. A total of US$320 million changed hands.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained