■ Share prices close lower
Share prices closed 0.65 percent lower yesterday, finding no support in a lackluster Wall Street performance overnight, dealers said.
The TAIEX fell 43.33 points to 6,639.13, the day's low and off a high of 6,702.64, on turnover of NT$67.51 billion (US$2.08 billion).
Decliners led risers 587 to 328, with 139 stocks unchanged.
The market is likely to continue its rangebound consolidation in the near-term until Wall Street and regional markets provide more decisive leads, Jih Sun Securities Investment (日盛投顧) deputy manager Wilson Lien said.
■ FSC announces fraud crackdown
Starting from Aug. 1, people who make remittances of over NT$30,000 at banks will be required to go through an identity verification process by providing their identification papers with photos, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday.
The new rule aims to crack down on money laundering and other fraudulent activities, the financial regulator said at a press briefing.
Proxies entrusted to make remittances are required to show their identification documents as well, the commission said.
Meanwhile, the commission is mulling whether to make public the banks that have the most dummy accounts in terms of the proportion of total accounts as a way of countering fraud the commission added.
Banks that have too many dummy accounts will be penalized for their poor internal control, the regulator warned.
■ Q1 manufacturing sales rise
Taiwan's manufacturing sector booked total sales of NT$3.4 trillion in the first four months of this year, up 8.4 percent on the previous year, according to tallies released yesterday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
Sales in the information and electronics industries amounted to NT$1.3 trillion, up 22.7 percent compared with the same period last year, with sales of electronic parts and components accounting for NT$884.8 billion, up 34.4 percent year-on-year.
Sales in the chemical industry rose 6.3 percent from last year to NT$893.4 billion owing to skyrocketing oil prices, while sales in the metal and machinery industries declined 4 percent to NT$820.4 billion.
Sales in the household products industry fell 0.8 percent because of the emigration of the production lines of some textile manufacturers.
Meanwhile, the ratio of direct manufacturing sector exports climbed 2.6 percentage points from last year to 48 percent, mainly due to an increase in the level of direct exports from the information and electronic industries and the metal and machinery industries.
■ BenQ announces job cuts
BenQ Corp (明基), less than one year after taking over Siemens AG's handset division, will axe 277 jobs in Munich and end employment for 250 contract workers as demand for its phones slides.
The cuts at the company's handset head office in Germany will mostly affect the research and development department, where BenQ plans to cut 113 positions, according to a company statement yesterday. BenQ Mobile employs 3,100 full-time workers in Germany.
BenQ plans to complete the job cuts by the end of the year it said. The 250 workers hired from sources such as temping agencies will lose their jobs in Munich and Kamp-Lintfort, in western Germany, BenQ said.
■ NT dollar falls
The US dollar gained ground against the new Taiwan dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, increasing NT$0.108 to close at NT$32.455.
US$771 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],”
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
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