CPC seeks oil tender
Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油) is seeking condensate, a light crude oil, for loading in March.
The company wants sellers to submit offers by today and the offers must be valid until the end of the day, the company said in a statement sent by e-mail.
Condensate is a type of light oil produced in association with natural gas and usually processed into products such as naphtha.
Chinese Petroleum usually buys Australian grade condensate from the Northwest Shelf region.
Chinatrust top bond manager
Chinatrust Securities Co (中信銀證券) managed the most in New-Taiwan-dollar-denominated bond sales last year, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing unidentified brokerages.
Chinatrust Securities, the brokerage unit of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中國信託金控), arranged NT$90.75 billion of bonds sold by companies and financial institutions last year, the paper said. A total NT$447.3 billion (US$13.3 billion) of bonds were issued in the year.
KGI Securities Co (中信證券) came second, followed by Deutsche Bank AG, Yuanta Core Pacific Securities Co (元大證券) and SinoPac Securities (建華證券), the paper said.
Warning on China's growth
China's economic growth may slow this year after a wave of factory construction and an increase in bank loans, the New York Times reported, citing economists specializing in China.
While China's economy appears to be strong, the nation may be in a bubble. Almost half of China's economic growth is associated with investment spending, an extraordinary portion, the newspaper said.
Japan in the 1980s, Thailand and Indonesia in the mid-1990s and the US technology boom in the late 1990s were marked by increases in investment spending that exceeded historical averages, according to data from Citigroup Inc's Smith Barney unit.
In those cases, millions lost their savings and jobs when the bubbles ended, the newspaper said.
Beijing reviewing auto policy
The Chinese government is reviewing its new automotive industry policy after overseas carmakers complained the original draft limited their investment in local partners, while asking them to transfer more technology, the Asian Wall Street Journal reported, citing a copy of the draft.
The new report, which is labeled "draft sent for approval" and is expected to de adopted after the Lunar New Year holiday, focuses on reducing the number of carmakers in China through mergers and acquisitions, as well as environmental protection and fuel efficiency, the newspaper reported.
SMIC gets expansion loan
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, China's first producer of made-to-order chips, said it agreed a US$285 million loan from four Chinese banks to expand production capacity.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of Communications and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank will provide the five-year loan, the Shanghai-based chipmaker said.
Samsung may buy equipment
Samsung Electronics Co, the world's second-largest semiconductor maker, may this year for the first time buy more equipment used to make chips than Intel Corp, the world's largest chipmaker, the Financial Times reported, without saying where it got the information.
Intel may spend US$3.8 billion this year, about the same as last year, the paper reported.
NT drop predicted
The Taiwan dollar may fall tomorrow as the halt in trading for the Lunar New Year holiday reduces demand from overseas investors. Fund managers abroad last week bought NT$29 billion (US$860 million) of local equities, pushing the currency up 0.3 percent in the same period, according to Bloomberg.
"The Taiwan dollar may depreciate a little," said Yang Kunyi, a currency trader at Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank (上海銀行). The currency was steady at NT$33.68.
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