■ Yahoo-Kimo buys Wretch stake
Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩), one of the nation's largest Internet portals, announced yesterday that it had signed a contract to purchase shares of Wretch Co (無名小站), Taiwan's largest blog service portal, and would complete the deal in the first quarter of next year at the earliest.
The number of shares to be purchased and the value of the deal were not revealed. It was reported previously that Yahoo-Kimo planned to acquire Wretch for NT$700 million (US$21.52 million).
The brand name and services of Wretch would be preserved and Yahoo-Kimo would further upgrade its services, the company said in a statement yesterday.
Founded in 1999 in the form of a campus bulletin board system at National Chiao Tung University, Wretch has the 26th-highest volume of traffic in the world, according to rankings by independent industry source Alexa.com.
The share purchase demonstrates parent company Yahoo Inc's ambition to tap into the Web 2.0 industry. Yahoo has previously acquired several Web 2.0 companies such as photo-sharing site Flickr.
■ Formosa cuts gas prices
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), the nation's second-biggest fuel supplier, cut gasoline and diesel prices for the first time in three weeks, matching a move by larger rival Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油).
Domestic wholesale gasoline and diesel prices fell NT$0.30 a liter, effective 9am, Mailiao-based Formosa Petrochemical said in a faxed statement today.
State-run CPC earlier yesterday reduced prices by the same amount, (1.8 percent), reflecting lower international crude oil costs.
CPC introduced the pricing system after it posted a loss of NT$25.4 billion in the first eight months of the year.
Crude oil declined to US$61.22 a barrel in New York on Monday, down 2 percent from US$62.44 a week earlier, on forecasts that milder weather moving into the US would reduce demand for heating fuel.
■ S&P happier over Chunghwa
Standard & Poor's Ratings Services (S&P) said yesterday that it had placed its "AA-" long-term foreign currency corporate credit rating on Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) on CreditWatch with positive implications.
"The CreditWatch placement reflects Standard & Poor's evolving view of Chunghwa's credit profile, based on the company's very strong financial profile and reduced government ownership," credit analyst Daniel Hsiao (蕭黎明) said in a statement yesterday.
Chunghwa's credit profile may qualify for a higher rating than the sovereign rating on Taiwan (AA-/Negative/A-1+), the statement said.
Resolution of the CreditWatch placement is likely over the next few weeks after S&P clarifies the company's strategy and policies with Chunghwa management, particularly with respect to its overseas expansion and balance sheet structure.
■ Inotera orders from ASML
ASML Holding NV, Europe's largest maker of semiconductor equipment, received an order for machines worth NT$1.39 billion from Taiwan's Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技).
Taoyuan-based Inotera disclosed the purchase with ASML Hong Kong Ltd in a filing with the country's stock exchange yesterday.
ASML is the world's biggest maker of machines used to print circuitry on silicon wafers.
■ NT dollar drops
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.033 to close at NT$32.522. US$1.061 billion 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