TAIEX recoups early losses
Shares closed little changed yesterday, as local interest in high-dividend yielding companies supported the market against Wall Street's overnight fall, dealers said.
The market had recouped early losses on renewed worries about interest rate hikes after minutes of the US Federal Reserve's recent meeting indicated it is not ruling out tightening measures to curb inflation, they said.
The TAIEX closed down 9.25 points or 0.11 percent at 8,075.20, on turnover of NT$107.97 billion (US$3.27 billion). Gainers led decliners 637 to 467, with 211 stocks unchanged.
CEPD to promote health plan
The Council for Economic Plan-ning and Development (CEPD) will introduce its globalization project for Taiwan's medical services to 15 multinational insurance companies later this month, a council spokesman said yesterday.
The council hopes to attract more foreigners to come here for medical treatment with the help of these multinational insurance companies, including American Life Insurance Co.
The council is targeting US and British residents, as statistics show that nearly 47 million Americans lack medical insurance and 30 million do not have sufficient health care insurance and that the British medical system makes patients wait for long periods of time to receive treatment.
NT dollar dips
The New Taiwan dollar traded lower against the greenback yesterday, declining NT$0.01 to close at NT$33.105 on the Taipei Forex Inc. Turnover was US$1.093 billion.
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