Come to Taiwan: commission
International corporations invested by Taiwanese businessmen overseas wishing to raise capital from the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) should set up new companies in Taiwan and apply to the Securities and Futures Commission for first listing, a commission official said yesterday.
The official said that Taiwanese-invested companies in China or other countries may also raise capital from the TSE through the issuance of Taiwan Depository Receipts (TDRs), under the condition that they are already first-listed companies in the following 16 stock exchanges -- namely the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) , NASDAQ, London, Frankfurt, Pan-Europe in Paris and Amsterdam, Italy, Toronto, Australia, Tokyo, Osaka, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Thailand and Johannesburg.
Companies listed on the stock exchange of Hong Kong are not entitled to the "secondary listing" practice, however, due to the complications involving companies with Chinese capital.
Factory closures double
The number of factory closures almost doubled in the first seven months of this year as local companies shift production to China, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement yesterday.
Between January and last month, factory closures rose to 3,361 from 1,865 a year earlier, with closures more than quadrupling to 1,228 in July alone, the ministry said.
Taiwanese companies' investment in China rose almost a third in the first seven months of this year, the ministry said last week.
Meanwhile, new factory registrations in Taiwan rose 7.7 percent to 478 last month from 444 a year earlier. In the first seven months, factory openings climbed 14 percent to 2,723 from 2,391.
Phone-sex firms look to China
Cheap labour costs in China is said to have taken away even the jobs of Taiwanese phone sex operators, a Chinese-language newspaper said yesterday.
Several dozen telephone pornographic companies have extended their operations to China by hiring Chinese women to do the job, the newspaper said.
The paper said that hiring a Taiwanese woman costs between NT$20,000 and NT$30,000 (US$571 and US$857) a month, but it cost just NT$3,000 to hire a Chinese hostess.
A recent raid at a company which operates a porn phone hot line showed that the owner hired more than 200 Chinese women in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen to answer calls from Taiwan.
Depositories sign memorandum
Executives of the Taiwan Securities Central Depository Co. (TSCD) and the New York-based Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. (DTCC) signed a memorandum of understanding in New York on Monday for the exchange of information on clearance and settlement services for equities, bonds and securities.
A TSCD spokesman said the company will send two groups of its staff to New York next month to receive clearance services training at DTCC headquarters.
Bank lending increases
Taiwan bank lending rose in July for a third straight month, according to statistics provided by the nation's central bank.
Total loans by 405 financial institutions -- including the central bank, domestic banks, foreign bank branches, credit cooperatives and others -- rose 1.7 percent in July to NT$13.6 trillion from a year ago, the central bank said.
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned weak against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.014 to close at NT$34.194 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$565 million.
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