Cabinet OKs law amendments
The Executive Yuan yesterday approved draft amendments to seven financial laws designed to effectively curb financial crime such as money laundering.
During a regular weekly Cabinet meeting, Premier Yu Shyi-kun instructed a task force under the Ministry of Justice to step up its crackdown on this type of crime.
The amendments affect the Securities Transaction Law (證交法), the Statute of Insurance (保險法), the Banking Law (銀行法) and the Money Laundering Law (洗錢法), setting conditions to prohibit criminals from enjoying or possessing their illegitimate gains, Yu explained.
Citigroup unit bullish
Citigroup Asset Management yesterday expressed a bullish view on economic recoveries in the US and Asia, with an analyst saying that stock performances in both US and Asian markets are expected to outshine other markets.
"The return on under-valued equities in US stock markets -- a worthwhile investment destination -- will be greater than fixed-income bonds," said Vincent Chen (陳家豪), head of the group's retail business, at a press conference.
Although the US economy appeared to slightly flatten last month, the country's stock performance is expected to climb up this month in light of the growth of rosy corporate earnings in the fourth quarter and the first quarter next year, Chen said.
The foreseeable pick-up in the US' information-technology (IT) industries, moreover, will benefit the IT sector's stock performance in Taiwan and South Korea, which are the US' two major outsourcing partners in Asia, he said.
FedEx extends deadline
Starting Monday, customers of FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp, in Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Taichung, Changhua and Tainan can call in package pick-ups up to 7pm, the company announced yesterday.
The new deadline is as much as four hours later than the current call-in cut-off times in those areas, it said.
FedEx extended cut-off times in the greater Taipei area from 5pm to 7pm in July and began to offer the same service in Kaohsiung and Pingtung last month.
More efficient scanning machines and new larger cargo planes have allowed FedEx to extend the service, the company's managing director for Taiwan, Jimmy Chen (陳信孝), said yesterday.
The company's sorting center at CKS International Airport is expected to increase its sorting capacity from 6,000 packages per hour to 8,000 by year's end, Chen said.
More women seek jobs online
Over 30 percent of Taiwan's Internet users look for work online each month, with female job-seekers outnumbering males, according to the results of a recent survey.
The poll conducted by the Taipei-based Insight Xplorer (創事際), found that each executive search Web site received more than 30 percent of Internet users per month during the June-August period.
In August, some 3.47 million users -- or 36 percent of the country's 10 million cyber population -- logged on to the Internet to seek jobs, according to the survey.
Since the beginning of summer vacation, over 3 million Internet users sought jobs on line each month. Female job seekers outnumbered their male counterparts by around 10 percent, the company said.
NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday dropped against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.030 to close at NT$33.810 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$687 million.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by