With the Dragon Boat Festival being held today, local companies apparently regarded yesterday as auspicious, with a total of 172 firms holding their annual shareholders' meeting. This triggered complaints from some retail investors, who said that the simultaneous announcement of results discouraged them from monitoring corporate performances.
More than two dozen financial institutions released their results, with some reporting a profitable year and declaring bounteous dividends during the meetings.
Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (
Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) declared a cash dividend of NT$1.3 and a stock dividend of NT$1.45. Company chairman Thomas Wu (吳東亮) said at the shareholders' meeting that financial institutions faced grave challenges in operations last year as the domestic stock market remained at a low and the financial regulator imposed more restrictions on marketing activities in the consumer-banking sector.
Even so, the company expects to achieve an after-tax net income of NT$13.5 billion for the whole year, up 20 percent from last year's NT$11.3 billion, the company said.
Shinkong Financial Holding Co's (新光金控) board yesterday approved a proposal to acquire Macoto Bank (誠泰銀行) as a wholly-owned subsidiary through a share swap. The acquisition, which will take effect on Oct. 1, will help Shinkong Financial expand its number of banking locations to 108, with 50 located in the greater Taipei area.
Shinkong also announced NT$3.91 billion of after-tax net income for the first five months of the year, with earnings per share at NT$1.27.
Cosmos Bank Taiwan (萬泰銀行), the nation's first and largest cash-card issuer, approved a proposal to authorize its board to increase capital through a private placement at its stockholder meeting yesterday.
Although the decision was viewed as paving the way for the US-based General Electric Co to buy a stake in the local lender, Cosmos Bank's high-level officials remained tight-lipped about the possibility of such a deal.
Fubon Financial Holding Co (
The International Bank of Taipei's (IBT,
First Financial Holding Co (第一金控), the nation's fourth-largest financial-services company by assets, said in a statement that shareholders approved a plan to sell its property-insurance unit, Mingtai Fire and Marine Insurance Co (明台產險), to Japan's Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. First Financial first announced the plan to sell Mingtai on April 22 for NT$8.4 billion.
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