■ Powerchip to sell new shares
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), Taiwan's biggest maker of computer memory chips, yesterday said it plans to sell a maximum of 600 million new shares to raise fund for new cost-saving facilities. "The share sales aim to expand capacity and enhance the company's competitiveness," Powerchip said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp. The company has not decided to sell the shares in the form of global depositary receipts overseas, or corporate bonds at home, according the statement.
■ CPC hit by high oil prices
State-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油) said yesterday it could incur NT$45 billion (US$1.39 billion) in losses due to historically high crude oil prices. "Imports of crude oil account for more than 80 percent of the CPC's costs. High crude oil prices have imposed tremendous pressure on the company," a CPC spokesman said. "In particular, as a state-owned company, the CPC is not allowed to raise domestic fuel prices in line with international crude prices without government approval," he added. The NT$45 billion forecast losses were based on the crude prices of US$58 to US$62 per barrel, he said. In the first two months of this year, the CPC posted NT$9.3 billion in losses, the spokesman said. The CPC recorded a NT$9.6 billion pre-tax profit last year. The spokesman said CPC would strive to improve operational efficiency to help cushion the negative impact of oil prices.
■ Lawmakers urge reforms
Lawmakers yesterday urged the Financial Supervisory Commission to tighten hostile takeover regulations to prevent a few rich families from monopolizing the nation's finance resources through high financial leverage. Overly loose hostile takeover regulations without proper support measures are unnjust and can cause instability in the financial sector, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Joanna Lei (雷倩) said yesterday. The proposal was made amid the public's growing concern over the Koos family's bids to acquire state-controlled Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) and private Taiwan International Securities Co (金鼎證券), which controlled combined NT$7 trillion in assets, through Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) and China Development Financial Holding Co (中華開發), in which the family controlled a minimal shareholding of 8 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
■ Trust-Mart denies takeover
Trust-Mart (好又多量販), which operates 100 retail stores in China, denied a newspaper report that Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Carrefour SA and Lianhua Supermarket Holdings Ltd (聯華超市) plan to bid for the company. ``It's not true,'' said He Delai (何德來), assistant to the president of Trust-Mart, in a telephone interview in Shanghai yesterday. ``We're still working on an initial public offering in Hong Kong. It's a long and complicated process that depends on many factors,'' he said. The retailers are likely to submit preliminary bids for Trust-mart, founded by Taiwanese entrepreneurs, before a deadline next week, the London-based Financial Times reported yesterday, citing people close to the situation. The retailer is set to be sold for more than US$1 billion, the report said.
■ NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, climbing NT$0.090 to close at NT$32.421. A total of US$587 million changed hands during the day's trading.
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