■ Stocks down over N Korea
Shares closed 1.18 percent lower yesterday as concerns over North Korea's nuclear test plans wiped out early gains inspired by the record close on Wall Street, dealers said.
With the five-day holiday starting tomorrow, investors opted to lock in profits from recent gainers, including China plays and financial shares, they said.
The TAIEX closed down 81.90 points at the day's low of 6,874.98 on turnover of NT$77.54 billion (US$2.35 billion).
Decliners led risers 746 to 371, with 133 stocks unchanged.
■ Citigroup upbeat on debt
Citigroup Taiwan expects the nation's consumer credit crisis to bottom out in the fourth quarter, a senior company executive said yesterday.
"According to our evaluation, the bad debt that most lenders wrote off peaked in the second quarter. It will take about six months to write off the rest of the bad debt," Victor Kuan (管國霖), country manager of Citibank's consumer banking business in Taiwan, told a news conference.
"Therefore, we expect the consumer credit crisis to bottom out in the fourth quarter," Kuan said.
■ New postings at the FSC
The Cabinet yesterday approved a slew of personnel changes in the Financial Supervisory Commission, with legal affairs director-general Austin Chan (詹庭禎) taking up the post of secretary-general, the commission said in a statement.
The Cabinet also promoted Yang Nan (楊柟), secretary-general of the commission's Banking Bureau, to bureau deputy director-general, while Chen Wei-lung (陳惟龍), deputy director-general of the Insurance Bureau, was named deputy director-general of the Securities and Futures Bureau.
Chen's spot will be filled by Insurance Bureau Secretary-General Tseng Yu-chiong (曾玉瓊), the commission said.
■ FSC strengthens S Africa ties
The Financial Supervisory Commission said on Tuesday that it had inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on bilateral financial supervisory cooperation in securities and the insurance industries with South Africa's Financial Services Board.
The renewed pact was the first agreement signed under the name of "FSC, Taiwan" with a country that is not a diplomatic ally. The securities and insurance sectors are covered in the same MOU, the commission said.
Taiwan has signed MOUs on bilateral financial supervisory collaboration with 24 countries, including the UK, France and the Netherlands, according to the financial watchdog.
■ AIG looking for targets
The American International Group (AIG) is looking for investment opportunities in Taiwan as part of plans to fuel its expansion and strengthen its commitment to local customers, said Martin Sullivan, AIG president and chief executive officer, yesterday in Taipei.
Sullivan was in town to attend the inauguration ceremony of the new headquarters of Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽), AIG's subsidiary, in Taipei's bustling Xinyi District.
He said he had regularly discussed with Nan Shan Life chairman Edmund Tse (謝仕榮) whether there were appropriate targets for mergers.
Sales of life and non-life insurance currently account for 40 percent of AIG interests, while asset management accounts for around 20 percent, he added.
■ NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar turned weak against its US counterpart yesterday, declining NT$0.065 to close at NT$33.120.
Turnover was US$742 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