■ CSFB derivatives office opens
Credit Suisse First Boston Corp (CSFB), the securities unit of Switzerland's second-largest bank, said it opened a listed derivatives broker in Taiwan yesterday. Credit Suisse will trade future and option contracts listed on the Taiwan Futures Exchange for qualified foreign and domestic clients through its branch in Taipei, the bank said in a statement. "We expect the listed derivatives market in Taiwan to continue to grow rapidly as the use of these products for hedging and investment purposes becomes more widespread," Alexander Lin, managing director and head of equity derivatives trading in Asia at Credit Suisse, said in the statement. The average daily volume of Taiwan-listed derivatives contracts increased substantially last year, making the Future Exchange the fifth largest in Asia, according to the securities firm. Credit Suisse opened a branch in Taipei in 1998, the same year the government formed a futures exchange as part of the reorganization of its financial industry.
■ TFEC eyes US sales
The Taiwan Futures Exchange Corp (TFEC) said yesterday it will discuss with the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), when it hosts a series of seminars in Taipei next month, on plans to trade Taiwanese electronics and financial index futures contracts in the US. The CBOT has expressed its willingness to first distributed a questionnaire to potential investors on their interests in trading of Taiwan's futures contracts, before further discussing the plan's viability with Taiwanese side, according to the futures exchange.
■ TSMC mulls expansion
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufact-uring Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world's largest supplier of made-to-order chips, may spend as much as NT$200 billion (US$6.5 billion) to build a factory and a research and development center, the company said. TSMC wants to reserve land for the project near its headquarters in Hsinchu, said Tzeng Jinnhaw (曾晉皓), a company spokesman, responding to a Chinese-language business daily. No schedule or money has been budgeted, he said. Taiwanese semiconductor makers will invest about NT$300 billion expanding output and develop production technology here, the newspaper said, citing company executives. The paper didn't give a timeframe for the investments. TSMC aims to build a factory to make 12-inch silicon wafers, Tzeng said. The company on Jan. 27 said it planned to spend about US$2.6 billion this year for expansion, 8 percent more than it invested last year.
■ DaimlerChrysler pushing sales
DaimlerChrysler AG is aiming to sell 4,500 Mercedes-Benz vehicles, 800 cars for Chrysler and Jeep brands, as well as 500 Smart compacts in Taiwan this year, Wolfram Geisler, president and CEO of DaimlerChrysler Taiwan Ltd, said yesterday at a press gathering. Geisler said Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler still maintained a very strong position in the local passenger car market last year, and he expect good opportunities for these two brands this year following the recent introduction of new Mercedes-Benz CLS and Chrysler 300C luxury sedans. The US-German automaker also plans to launch the revamped model of Mercedes-Benz M-Class, the all-new compact sports tourer B-Class, the new S-Class, as well as the new Jeep Grand Cherokee, Geisler said.
■ NT dollar gains
The New Taiwan dollar maintained strength against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.071 to close at NT$30.879 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$799 million, compared with US$947 million last Friday.
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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