■ Shares close higher
Shares closed 0.40 percent higher yesterday, extending Tuesday's technical rebound in the wake of an upward turn on Wall Street overnight and a general recovery on world markets, dealers said.
However, the rise was capped by profit-taking amid lingering caution over the sustainability of such technically driven gains, they said.
The TAIEX added 29.83 points at 7,480.89. Turnover was NT$122.49 billion (US$3.71 billion). Risers led decliners 619 to 520, with 194 stocks unchanged.
■ CDIC to help Bowa, China United
Central Deposit Insurance Corp (CDIC, 中央存保) said yesterday that it has dispatched its personnel to supervise and provide assistance for blacklisted Bowa Bank (寶華銀行) and China United Trust and Investment Corp (中聯信託).
CDIC's personnel will review the two financial institutions' important proposals to be discussed in their board meetings and will attend the meetings if necessary, CDIC president Johnson Chen (陳戰勝) told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview.
CDIC will also supervise the two's capital flows, the progress of recapitalization and their plans to look for new investors to improve corporate finance, he said.
Bowa Bank and China United are two of the four troubled financial institutions blacklisted by the government's restructuring fund, which took over the management of Taitung Business Bank (台東企銀) in December, as well as Enterprise Bank of Hualien (花蓮企銀) and The Chinese Bank (中華銀行) in January.
■ New investment for Powertech
Powertech Technology Inc (力成科技), one of the nation's leading memory chip testing and packaging service providers, said yesterday that chipmakers Elpida Memory Inc and Toshiba Corp agreed to invest US$20 million each in the company following in the steps of Intel Corp.
The two Japanese companies will make the investments through buying corporate bonds issued by Powertech. The investments would complete the Taiwanese company's plan to raise NT$3.5 billion in bonds that can be converted into shares at a later date to expand capacities.
Last Friday, Intel announced it had bought NT$2.11 billion worth of Powertech's corporate bonds.
■ Taiwan ranks high in report
In a MasterIndex of Women's Advancement report released by MasterCard Worldwide yesterday, Taiwan ranked third with a score of 82.19, compared to 72.32 a year ago. The nation was only behind New Zealand's 89.85 and the Philippines' 87.43, the report said.
This is the third year that the organization has released the survey of 13 Asia-Pacific markets.
The region as a whole showed that women's socio-economic advancement dropped slightly from a score of 76.11 last year to 72.09 this year.
The result shows that while women continue to steadily advance in labor force participation and higher education, compared to men they are less bullish in relation to holding managerial positions.
"This ... negatively affects the scores pertaining to the self-perception of women, resulting in a lower index score for certain markets," said Georgette Tan (陳俐仙), vice president of communications in Asia/Pacific, the Middle East and Africa with MasterCard.
■ NT dollar drops
The New Taiwan dollar fell to the lowest against its US counterpart in more than a week on speculation foreign investors will sell the currency after cutting holdings of local stocks for four straight days.
The NT dollar fell to NT$32.994 against the US currency, the weakest since Feb. 26, before closing onshore trading at NT$32.976 compared with NT$32.970 yesterday, according to Taipei Forex Inc.
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