■ Powerchip ups Macronix stake
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), Taiwan's biggest memory-chip maker, raised its stake in Macronix International Co (旺宏電子) to 2.79 percent to become the company's biggest institutional investor.
The chipmaker bought a 1.4 percent stake in Macronix for NT$377 million (US$11.5 million) last month, Powerchip said yesterday in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The move came after Powerchip said in June that it bought a wafer plant from Macronix for NT$5.3 billion and the companies would cooperate in advanced technology, including production of flash memory chips. The factory is located in Hsinchu, where Powerchip and Macronix are based.
The company bought 42.05 million Macronix shares at an average price of NT$8.96 each between July 4 and July 31 for investment purposes, the statement said, without providing details.
■ FSC mulls bank relaxation
Banks affiliated with financial groups may soon be able to acquire rivals or other financial holding companies alone, instead of through parent financial holding firms as current practice requires, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday.
The commission is mulling whether to relax the investment restrictions.
The move may facilitate consolidation of the nation's crowded banking sector.
The planned relaxation aims to equalize the status of banks under the umbrella of financial holding firms to that of stand-alone banks as well as securities houses and insurance company affiliates, commission spokesperson Susan Chang (張秀蓮) said.
Currently, financial groups' bank affiliates are not allowed to invest in other financial institutions while their standalone rivals are free to do so.
The relaxation may enable large bank affiliates of financial groups to acquire smaller-scale financial holding firms. Chang did not deny the possibility, saying only that all investment plans were subject to regulator's review and approval.
■ Bonds rise again
Taiwan's 10-year bonds rose for a second day on speculation a decline in local stocks lured investors to government debt.
"As the economy slows, the mood is for investors to be bullish on bonds," said Liao Yu-ping, a fixed-income trader at Grand Cathay Securities Corp (大華證券) in Taipei, a unit of Taiwan's eighth-largest financial firm. "Money flowed from the market into bonds."
The yield on the benchmark 1.75 percent bond due in March 2016 fell 2.4 basis points, or 0.024 percentage points, to 2.075 percent as of 5pm in Taipei, according to Gretai Securities Market, Taiwan's biggest exchange for bonds. The price rose 0.2071, or NT$207.1 per NT$100,000 face amount, to 97.1747.
■ CEPD helps yacht builders
The Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) decided on Monday to earmark NT$450 million (US$13.74 million) to improve facilities at two docks in Kaohsiung Harbor to help Taiwan's yacht-building industry enhance its competitiveness in the world market.
Taiwan now ranks the fifth in the world in terms of yacht-building -- after Italy, the US, the Netherlands and the UK.
According to the council, Taiwan's yacht-building industry had its heyday in 1985 when it captured 94.1 percent of the market in the US. After that, the number of yachts built each year had dropped from 700 to 228 by 1994.
■ NT loses on greenback
The New Taiwan dollar weakened against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.062 to close at NT$32.818.
A total of US$684 million changed hands during the day.
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
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