MasterCard: business booming
MasterCard International announced yesterday that it has seen a continued strength in both credit and offline debit businesses in the third quarter, showing double-digit growth globally from a year earlier.
Cardholders worldwide using MasterCard-branded cards generated a gross dollar volume of US$365.9 billion for the three months ending Sept. 30, an increase of 10 percent over the same period last year, it said in a statement.
In Taiwan alone, the transaction volumes topped NT$355.4 billion (US$11 billion) in the July-to-September period, jumping by 20.5 percent from a year earlier, MasterCard added.
"Even as macroeconomic factors such as higher fuel prices and sporadic job growth have dampened consumer spending, we continue to see strong purchase activity across our global network," Robert Selander, MasterCard President and CEO, said in the statement.
China investment doubles
Taiwan's corporate investment in China more than doubled last month from the same period last year, the Investment Commission said on its Web site.
Approved investment rose to US$636 million from US$304 million a year earlier. In the first 10 months of this year, the government-approved investment by Taiwanese companies in China rose 52 percent to US$5.4 billion from US$3.56 billion a year ago.
Foreign direct investment in Taiwan rose 25 percent to US$339 million last month from US$270 million a year earlier. In the first 10 months, foreign direct investment rose 19 percent to US$2.93 billion from US$2.46 billion a year ago.
Current-account surplus shrinks
The nation's current-account surplus fell 22 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier to US$5.3 billion, the central bank said in a statement.
The surplus reached an all-time high of US$8 billion in the final quarter of last year.
The financial account, which measures investment flows, had an outflow of US$6.3 billion, widening from a revised outflow of US$868 million in the previous quarter, it said.
Direct investment and portfolio investment showed a net outflow of US$793 million and US$1.1 billion, respectively, in the third quarter, the report said.
Citigroup sells Fubon stake
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) said shareholder Citigroup Inc sold half its stake in the form of global depositary receipts (GDRs), raising US$399.6 million.
The stake was sold in the form of 40 million global depositary receipts for US$9.99 a unit, Fubon said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Each GDR, equal to 10 common shares, would trade in London.
Citigroup, the world's largest financial services company, said in June it's exiting Fubon to pursue its own strategy in Taiwan. The company paid NT$23 billion (US$708 million) in 2000 for a 15 percent stake in the former Fubon Group, which became a holding company in 2001.
NT dollar ends strong week
The New Taiwan dollar Friday lost NT$0.134 to close at NT$32.554 against the US dollar on the Taipei foreign exchange market, with turnover of US$1.078 billion. The local unit rose 1.3 percent against the greenback this week.
George Chou (周阿定), director general of the central bank's foreign-exchange department, said that the NT dollar's 4.3 percent gain this year hasn't had a "significant impact" on exports due to advances in other Asian currencies.
"Asian currencies are appreciating at the same time. It's the US dollar's weakness, not that the NT dollar is strong," he told reporters yesterday.
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