Stocks rose, led by Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) and China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控). The government plans to seek merger partners for state-controlled lenders, a Chinese-language newspaper reported.
"The government is pushing hard on financial reforms ahead of the March presidential election," said Mike Shiao (蕭光一), a fund manager at Invesco Taiwan Ltd (景順投信). "Government-instigated mergers will make the financial sector more efficient and competitive."
The TAIEX rose 98.40, or 1.7 percent, to 5870.17. Banks were the second-biggest gainer as a group. The Taiwan Futures Index added 1.8 percent to 5914.
About six stocks advanced for every one that declined.
Mega Financial, Taiwan's third-largest financial company by market value, rose 40 cents, or 2 percent, to NT$20.40. China Development Financial, the fifth biggest, added NT$0.90, or 6 percent, to NT$16, its highest in 52 weeks.
Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控), Taiwan's fourth-biggest financial services company by market value, rose 40 cents, or 1.2 percent, to NT$33.80. Chinatrust said late Monday after the market closed that it plans to write off NT$10.1 billion in goodwill and bad debt acquired when it bought Grand Commercial Bank (萬通銀行).
The write-off will lower Chinatrust Financial's profit before tax to NT$9 billion from the NT$19 billion it estimated earlier, the company said in a statement. It will also lower the bank's bad loan ratio to 2.4 percent,the statement said.
Chinatrust has about NT$25 billion of bad loans, equivalent to 3.9 percent of total lending, Perry Chang (張明田), the company's financial controller, said last week.
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