■ Banking
Forex reserves fall
The nation's foreign-exchange reserves fell last month for the first month-on-month drop in more than four years, the central bank said. The reserves, the third-highest in the world, fell to US$253.56 billion (NT$8.05 trillion) from a record US$253.62 billion in June. The decline was caused by the nation's shrinking trade surplus this year, as well as an increase in the amount of money Taiwanese tourists spent abroad during the summer break, the peak travel season. The last time the country's foreign exchange reserves experienced a month-on-month decline was in June 2001, a spokeswoman said. In the first half of this year, the trade surplus totaled just US$420 million, compared with a US$3.89 billion surplus in the same period last year.
■ Finance
Waterland to hold meeting
Waterland Financial Holding Co (國票金控), the nation's smallest financial service provider, is likely to hold another board meeting on Friday to decide on the pending appointment of its new chairman, after obtaining the Financial Supervisory Commission's approval for the posting on Thursday. The report said Victor Liu (劉維琪), Waterland's chairman-to-be, would seek consensus on his appointment from major shareholders with an all-out effort before convening the board meeting. The management reshuffle at Waterland's subsidiaries, including International Bill Finance Corp (國際票券) and Waterland Securities Co (國票證券), will be discussed once consensus is reached. Nice Group (耐斯) took five of the 11 seats on Waterland's board on June 29 after months of intense competition with another investor group led by Hung San-hsiung (洪三雄). Hung, chairman of Taiwan Financial Asset Services Corp (台灣金服公司), and his supporters grabbed four seats. The Ministry of Finance controls the remainder.
■ Stocks
TAIEX up 2 percent on week
The stock market was closed yesterday due to Typhoon Matsa. But for the week through Thursday, the TAIEX rose 134.03 points or 2.12 percent to 6,446.01, following a 1.08 percent decline the previous week. Average daily turnover for the four days stood at NT$95.56 billion (US$3 billion), down from NT$107.01 billion a week earlier. Dealers said it's likely profit-taking will keep the market on the defensive after shares breached the 10-year moving average of 6,420.
■ Telecoms
Foxconn sells shares
Foxconn International Holdings Ltd (富士康), which makes mobile phones, said it has raised HK$136 million (US$17.5 million) by selling new shares to employees of one of its units. The company sold 26.9 million shares at HK$5.065 apiece, a 17.6 percent discount to the closing price of HK$6.15 on Aug. 3, the unit of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) said. The new share issue represents 0.387 percent of its enlarged capital.
■ Technology
Hynix slips past Micron
Hynix Semiconductor Inc of South Korea overtook Micron Technology Inc as the world's second-largest maker of computer-memory chips during the second quarter, according to market researcher Isuppli Corp. Hynix's sales of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) fell 13 percent from the first quarter to US$939 million, while Micron's fell 24 percent to US$840 million, Isuppli said. Micron and Hynix have been swapping industry rankings every quarter since last year.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts