■ Banking
Waterland to bid for assets
Taiwan's Waterland Financial Holdings (國票金融控股公司) plans to bid for assets and liabilities of the failed Kaohsiung Business Bank (高雄企銀), a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing Waterland Financial's board of directors. Waterland Financial will tomorrow bid for the remaining operations of Kaohsiung Business and fold them into a banking unit of its holding company, the report said. Rival bidder Taishin Financial Holdings Co may not bid for Kaohsiung Business because it's more interested in First Financial Holding Co, the report said. Dallas-based Lone Star Funds in June bought the bad loans of Kaohsiung Bank for NT$8.23 billion (US$240 million), leaving the lender's assets, including 60 branches and subsidiaries, and liabilities to other interested buyers.
■ Business law
HRW blasts sentence
Chinese courts are undermining the rule of law by using state secrecy legislation to protect powerful local business interests, a human rights group charged Friday. The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned a Shanghai appeals court ruling on Thursday that upheld a three-year jail term for property lawyer Zheng Enchong, convicted of passing state secrets to foreigners. The group called on Beijing to intervene. Zheng was sentenced in October on charges of "illegally providing state secrets to entities outside of China" after faxing two public documents to Human Rights in China that the Shanghai Secrets Bureau then designated as confidential. According to statistics cited by HRW, in Shanghai 850,000 households and 2.5 million residents have been relocated in the past decade. "Even the official Peoples Daily criticizes judicial mistreatment of evicted tenants and calls for their rights to be protected," said an HRW spokesperson. "Why is Mr Zheng in jail for saying the same thing?"
■ Toys
Taiwan becomes EU's No. 4
Taiwan has become the EU's fourth-largest source for toy imports, according to the latest statistics released Saturday by the EU Executive Commission. The tallies show that EU toy imports nearly doubled to 11.5 billion euros last year from 5.8 billion euros in 1995. According to the statistics, China was the EU's largest toy supplier, followed by Japan, the US and Taiwan, in that order. During the same five-year period, the EU's video game imports also increased from 540 million euros to 2.47 billion euros, with Japan as its largest supplier.
■ Luxury goods
Gucci heads to bow out
Domenico De Sole and Tom Ford, the men who rebuilt luxury goods group Gucci, are likely to bow out on a high note. The two men, respectively chief executive and top designer, are leaving the group in April, when Pinault-Printemps-Redoute takes control. The group revealed Friday that it had turned in a strong performance in the three months to the end of October and was expecting an "outstanding" fourth quarter. Gucci's chain-bit handbags and the autumn ready to wear collection have brought buyers back into the stores, with strong growth in the US, Europe and Asia. Along with its peers in the luxury goods sector, Gucci has suffered from the slowdown in international tourism caused by the SARS outbreak and the Iraq war, but yesterday De Sole said all the divisions had "performed extremely well."
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
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
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],”