■ Moon cakes no reward
TengMoon cakes have become the least favorite of gifts that employees want for the Mid-Autumn Festival because of high calories contained in these palm-sized traditional treats, according to a survey released by the Pan Asia Human Resource Corp (泛亞人力銀行) yesterday. The poll, conducted among 4,158 white-collar workers between Sept. 1 and last Friday, showed that 55.67 percent of the respondents prefer gift coupons, followed by gift boxes, pomelos, spirits and then moon cakes. Its another survey among 1,238 corporate executives during the same period suggested that 91.03 percent of companies are giving away bonuses or gift boxes to employees. The average cash gift for the festival is NT$1,397, up from last year's NT$1,372. Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) topped the list for employee rewards, giving its workers 1.8 months' salary, the poll said.
■ Postal savings up 5.07%
Postal savings totaled NT$3.28 trillion (US$96.5 billion) as of the end of last month, up by 5.07 percent, or NT$158.5 billion, from last year's level, according to the government's latest statistics. The statistics show that NT$1.759 trillion, or 53.52 percent of that amount, came from one-year deposits at postal offices. Some NT$1.23 trillion are held by depositors in passbook accounts, while the remaining NT$293.4 billion, or 8.93 percent, belong to other sorts of deposits.
■ Acer sells BenQ, Hon Hai shares
Acer Inc plans to sell 10 million Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) shares, according to a company statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The stake is worth NT$1.2 billion at the stock's closing share price yesterday of NT$119.50. Acer said it also plans to sell 125 million shares in BenQ Corp (明基電通). Those shares are valued at NT$4.6 billion, based on the closing price of NT$36.70 a share.
■ Chiao Tung to sell UMC shares
Chiao Tung Bank (交通銀行) plans to sell up to 110 million shares in United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) as American depositary receipts (ADRs), the bank's parent company Mega Financial Holdings Co (兆豐金控) said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. UMC, the world's second-largest supplier of made-to-order semiconductors, said last January that shareholders had sold 7.95 million ADRs for an average price of US$4.80. Each receipt is made up of five common UMC shares. Shares of UMC, down 21 percent this year, rose 1.4 percent to NT$21.2 yesterday. Mega Financial is the nation's second-largest financial services provider by market value.
■ Bank to sell Taisugar shares
Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀) said it plans to sell all the shares it owns in Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar, 台糖), as it tries to clean up its balance sheet. The bank plans to sell about 23 million shares, or a 0.3 percent stake in the government-owned sugar monopoly, through an auction in a month, the bank said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The government owns about 97 percent of Taisugar. The stock was listed in 1962 and delisted in 1967 after falling sugar prices drove down the stock.
■ NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday continued trading lower against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.027 to close at NT$33.920 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. The turnover was US$612.5 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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained