Fund selects asset firms
The state-managed Public Service Pension Fund (退撫基金) will select five foreign asset management firms as it diversifies into international stock indexes and other financial products, officials said yesterday.
"It is to the best of our interests to diversify the investment markets so that we can reduce our investment risk and make good use of the fund," said Chu Wu-hsien (朱武獻), acting chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Public Service Pension Fund.
Under the plan, the board will complete the selection process before the end of this year and NT$300 million will be used to invest in stocks and bonds. The rest of the fund will be used for investment in stock and bond indexes, he said.
The NT$190 billion fund was set up in 1995 to help some 610,000 military personnel, civil servants and teachers manage their retirement funds and make investment gains.
MOEA head visits Paris
Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (林義夫) arrived in Paris on Monday at the head of a large delegation to promote trade and economic cooperation between Taiwan and France.
In addition to trade officials, the delegation includes chief executive officers from both state-owned and private enterprises.
"We are here to seek partners to jointly develop the vast Asian market," Lin said.
During his three-day visit, Lin will meet with senior French officials on bilateral trade and economic issues.
He will also preside over an annual Taiwan-French economic cooperation conference in which Taiwanese officials will introduce the investment climate and incentives to woo French investors.
Starbucks raises stakes
Starbucks Corp, the world's largest coffee-shop chain with about 6,500 outlets, raised its stakes in its Shanghai and Taiwanese ventures to half from 5 percent, aiming to expand further in East Asia.
Starbucks agreed to pay US$21 million to buy 45 percent of the Shanghai chain from partners President Chain Store Co (統一超商) and Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業).
It's paying an undisclosed amount to the same companies for the 45 percent stake in the Taiwanese unit, said Wang Wen-hsin (王文欣), spokeswoman for President Chain.
President Chain and Uni-President, members of President Group, have 30 Starbucks shops in Shanghai and 109 in Taiwan.
Airlines to resume flights
China Airlines Co (華航) and EVA Airways Corp (長榮) will resume full flights to Hong Kong by the end of next month to meet market demand, company officials said yesterday.
China Airlines said it will gradually increase the number of daily flights this month and fully restore the 15-times-a-day service next month if it can manage rescheduling planes.
The carrier has seen up to 80 percent of its flights booked in the past two days, said Charles Chen (陳玉治), a public relations specialist at the airlines.
EVA Airways' service to Hong Kong in the past week has grown to five flights a day and it expects to resume its normal six daily flights on July 10, an EVA official said.
"We have seen reservations coming back to normal levels lately after Taiwan lifted the quarantine requirement for travellers from Hong Kong," the official said.
NT dollar maintains strength
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday maintained its strength against the US dollar, rising NT$0.028 to close at NT$34.584 on the Taiwan foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$417 million.
Agencies
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],”
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
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