■ Sogo doors still closed
Pacific Sogo Department Stores' (太平洋崇光百貨) flagship branch on Zhongxiao East Road in Taipei will be closed for the third day after a fire broke out on Thursday. The company was still trying to obtain permission to open from the Taipei City Government as of press time yesterday, said David Peng (彭振宇), special assistant to the company chairman.
According to a statement filed at the Taiwan Stock Exchange at 4:25pm yesterday, the company estimated its sales loss since Thursday noon was NT$60 million (US$1.8 million).
If the Taipei City Government does not perform a safety check before Monday, the company will lose a further NT$60 million. Company representatives refused to speculate if the department store would be closed for the entire weekend.
■ Food festival gets a test run
The 2006 Taipei Chinese Food Festival is scheduled to be held from Aug. 10-14 at the Taipei World Trade Center.
The festival will feature dishes from around Taiwan, in particular those from eastern Hualien and Taitung counties that have been deeply influenced by Aboriginal food.
In the runup to the festival, the organizers -- the Taiwan Visitors Association (TVA) -- sponsored an exhibition to introduce several creative and original dishes prepared with typical ingredients from the eastern region on Thursday.
■ Cathay looking at Chinese banks
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), the nation's biggest financial services group, said its banking arm is seeking to invest in Chinese lenders, serving its customers in China where Taiwanese businesses have invested US$150 billion.
"Our banking unit is looking for opportunities to invest in Chinese banks in coastal cities," Lee Chang-ken (李長庚), Cathay Financial executive vice president, said on Friday. "There are some informal talks. Nothing can be concluded before the cross-strait authorities reach agreement on the monitoring mechanism."
Lee said it's too early to say what kinds of Chinese banks Cathay Financial is interested in before the monitoring blueprint, currently being drafted by the Financial Supervisory Commission and its mainland counterpart, is outlined.
■ Pilots receive the best pay
The average monthly salary of employees in state-owned enterprises was NT$66,535 (US$2,047) compared with the average wage of NT$39,056 for employees in private businesses in July last year, according to survey results released yesterday by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA).
The survey of the earning capacity of various jobs was carried out last August among employees of 9,264 enterprises.
They found that of those surveyed, airline pilots had the highest monthly salary of NT$210,000.
Pilots were followed by ship navigators (NT$156,000), doctors (NT$130,000), accountants (NT$100,000), securities and financial agents (NT$95,000), well diggers (NT$93,000), crude oil handlers(NT$92,000), lawyers (NT$86,000), metallurgists and mining engineers (NT$84,000) and oil refiners (NT$83,000). The lowest-salaried were waiters in restaurants, includingtemporary or part-time jobs.
Waiters on average earned NT$14,000 a month, while bartenders received NT$16,300, gas station attendants made NT$16,500, and kitchen workers earned NT$18,200.
■ NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against its US counterpart Friday, declining NT$0.039 to close at NT$32.795 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$902 million.
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