■ Telecom
HK drops PCCW
Richard Li's PCCW Ltd, Hong Kong's biggest phone company, will be dropped from the Hang Seng Hong Kong Large-cap Index, after its market capitalization fell more than a fifth in the first half of the year. PCCW will be replaced by Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, Asia's sixth-largest carrier by sales, which will join the Mid-cap Index from Sept 8, index complier HSI Services Ltd said in a press release. PCCW will remain in the benchmark Hang Seng Index. The decision comes because PCCW failed to meet the required market size in a half-yearly review done by HSI Services, said general manager Vincent Kwan. PCCW had HK$22.6 billion (US$2.9 billion) market capitalization as of last Friday, 60 percent of Cathay Pacific's market value.
■ Stock markets
Tokyo requires disclosures
Tokyo Stock Exchange will require its listed companies to disclose details about their quarterly earnings results in fiscal year 2004, Nikkei English News reported, without citing anyone. The exchange is requiring listed companies to provide details of sales and other data every quarter starting this fiscal year, Nikkei said. It has decided to require the businesses to disclose more detailed items for the fiscal year ending March 31, including operating profits, pretax profits and net profits. Companies that go public on April 1 or later will have to release data under the new guidelines, although the exchange will give currently listed companies a three-year grace period before making the new requirements mandatory, the news service reported.
■ Internet
Pirates won't be named
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College don't have to immediately identify students accused of illegally copying music over the Internet, a federal judge ruled. The ruling by US District Judge Joseph Tauro delays the Recording Industry Association of America's plan to sue individual users of file-sharing programs that distribute copyrighted music. The organization has filed more than 871 subpoenas in US District Court in Washington, seeking data from colleges and Internet-service providers about such users. Tauro issued a one-line ruling yesterday that the subpoenas weren't properly served in Massachusetts and granted the schools' motion set them aside. MIT and Boston College had said that they would comply with the subpoenas when they are filed in Massachusetts, not Washington.
■ Automobiles
Kia's workers will strike
Workers at Kia Motors Corp, South Korea's second-largest automaker by sales, plan a partial strike starting next week for more wages and shorter working hours, Yonhap News said, citing a union official it didn't identify. The plant will be idle for two hours each during the day and night shifts tomorrow and Tuesday, Yonhap said. On Wednesday and Thursday, the hours will double to four hours each, it said. Union workers will also refuse to work overtime, Yonhap said. Kia workers have proposed the introduction of a 40-hour workweek starting Sept. 1, with terms including a 5 percent increase in productivity. The strikes also seek an 11 percent wage increase and other conditions. The workers held walkouts for three days in July, causing the automaker to lose production of 5,800 units of its vehicles worth about 87 billion won (US$73 million).
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the