■ Finance
Nomura eyes Taishin stake
Nomura Securities Co may spend NT$4 billion (US$125 million) buying a stake in Taishin Financial Holdings Co (台新銀行) in a private placement, the Economic Daily News reported, without saying where it got the information. Nomura Securities' board of directors approved the investment earlier this week, the report newspaper said, without elaborating on the size of the stake. Nomura Securities is owned by Nomura Holdings Inc, Japan's biggest brokerage. Taishin Financial said on Jan. 27 that it would sell NT$27 billion in securities to Newbridge Asia IV, LP in a private placement. The Newbridge Capital LLC fund will buy NT$20 billion in stocks and NT$7 billion in convertible bonds from Taipei-based Taishin Financial, it said.
■ Consumer affairs
Alexander, California fined
Consumer protection officials inspected more fitness centers yesterday following an incident in an Alexander Health Club (亞力山大俱樂部) branch that led to one death and 11 injuries during the Lunar New Year holiday. After an inspection of Alexander's Sinjhuang and Sanchong branches, Taipei County officials fined the Sinjhuang outlet NT$60,000 because of blocked exits. The Sanchung center was required to improve its emergency exit directory and remove objects blocking passages. Both outlets passed tests for carbon monoxide, the officials said. Meanwhile, California Fitness, another fitness chain with five outlets in Taipei City, was also fined NT$120,000 by city government officials. California's branch on Zhongxiao East Road was fined for poor ventilation maintenance and problems with its fire detector control system, as well as blocked passages, one official said.
■ Mobile phones
Nokia market share jumps
Nokia Oyj, the world's biggest maker of mobile phones, enjoyed the largest growth in share of the global handset market last year after the company focused on sales in emerging economies, an industry group said. Nokia's share of the worldwide market rose to 32.6 percent last year from 29.1 percent in 2004, while Motorola Inc shipped 18 percent of the world's handsets compared with 14.7 percent in 2004, researcher ISuppli Corp said yesterday in a report. Rising sales of low-cost models in emerging markets helped Espoo, Finland-based Nokia, the researcher said. Global mobile phone shipments gained 14 percent to 813 million units last year, from 713 million units a year earlier, ISuppli said. Fourth quarter shipments rose to 242 million units from 200 million a year earlier, the researcher said.
■ Securities
Fubon must compensate
Fubon Asset Management Co (富邦投信), which was punished last week over irregularities involving bond funds, is obligated to pay compensation for any losses incurred by fund investors, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday. Investors who traded or redeemed their investments in the affected portfolios after last October can request that the firm cover their losses, commission spokesman Lin Chung-cheng (林忠正) told reporters yesterday. Lin declined to disclose the volume of the illegal transactions or the number of investors potentially affected. Fubon Asset Management, the nation's largest securities investment trust firm, was fined NT$3.6 million for trading its mutual funds between May 2004 and October last year.
■ Entertainment
Vivendi buys Universal
Japan's Matsushita has agreed to a US$1.15 billion deal to sell to Vivendi Universal of France its 7.66 percent stake in a holding company that owns Universal Music Group, the two companies said yesterday. The deal raises to 100 percent Vivendi's ownership of Universal Studios Holding I Corp, which as well as owning the world's biggest music company also holds game developer Universal Interactive and 20 percent of NBC Universal. NBC Universal in turn owns motion picture maker Universal Studios. The remaining 80 percent of the company is held by US General Electric, which bought the stake from Vivendi in 2004 as the French company floundered in debt. Universal Studios Holding I is also sitting on US$3.7 billion of net cash, Vivendi Universal said in a statement in Paris.
■ Oil
Shell posts record profit
The Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell yesterday announced a record profit of US$22.94 billion for last year, the biggest annual profit ever posted for a British-listed company. As soaring crude prices boosted oil companies, profits of Royal Dutch Shell increased by nearly a third on last year. The results follow a year in which the cost of crude jumped from below US$45 a barrel to break the US$70 mark. Most of Shell's profits come from finding and extracting oil, and then selling it on to the markets. Analysts said Shell's profits showed that the unification of company structures last year between its British and Dutch wings had been a success. In view of "difficulties" arising from the situation in countries like Iraq and Nigeria Shell had also invested in "innovative" methods of exploration, including in Canada and South America to find more outlets.
■ Electronics
Man sues Apple over iPod
A Louisiana man claims in a lawsuit that Apple's iPod music player can cause hearing loss in people who use it. Apple has sold more than 42 million of the devices since they went on sale in 2001, including 14 million in the fourth quarter last year. The devices can produce sounds of more than 115 decibels, a volume that can damage the hearing of a person exposed to the sound for more than 28 seconds per day, according to the complaint. The iPod players are "inherently defective in design and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss," according to the complaint, filed on Tuesday in US District Court in San Jose, California, on behalf of John Kiel Patterson of Louisiana.
■ Internet security
Kama Sutra worm strikes
Internet security experts on Wednesday urged computer users to update their anti-virus software before a new worm nicknamed Kama Sutra unleashes its payload today. The computer worm, also known as Nyxem-D and MyWife.E, attaches itself to e-mails and tries to trick users into opening it by telling them it contains pornographic images. The worm is thought to have infected as many as 500,000 computers, mostly in India, Peru, Turkey and Italy according to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for security company F-Secure Corp. The worm is programmed to activate on the third day of every month. It can freeze the mouse and keyboard on a recipient's computer and overwrite files on the hard drive to make them inaccessible.
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
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six