TAIEX slides on retreat
Shares closed 1.43 percent lower yesterday on the back of the retreat in major regional markets during morning trade, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed down 114.68 points at 7,888.63, on turnover of NT$108.29 billion (US$3.28 billion).
The New Taiwan dollar rose NT$0.023 to close at NT$33.136 against the US dollar, on turnover of US$1.46 billion.
TTV shares to go on sale soon
The government is scheduled to start offering shares of the Taiwan Television Enterprise (TTV, 台視) to the public at NT$12 per share, starting from May 15 to June 22.
There will be more than 54 million shares, or a 19.46 stake in TTV, offered to the general public, Liu Chen-lo (劉振樂), vice president of Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行), said yesterday.
The government will also offer 2.16 percent of TTV shares at NT$10.8 per share to TTV employees as stock options, Liu said.
The share sale is expected to be completed by the end of August, he added.
Investors eye China United
The Financial Supervisory Commission is mulling halting the government's takeover of China United Trust and Investment Corp (中聯信託) as a foreign investor is offering to plow over NT$10 billion (US$302 million) into the debt-ridden lender.
A foreign asset management firm has expressed its long-term investment interest in China United, commission Chairperson Susan Chang (張秀蓮) said yesterday.
The company plans to explore more investment opportunities in the local market if the acquisition is successful, Chang said.
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