Bank of America set to hire
Bank of America Corp, the second-biggest in the US by market value, plans to boost hiring in Taiwan as it starts to trade and underwrite bonds and structured notes by the end of September.
Bank of America has about 200 employees at its sole branch in Taipei, said Wendy Tan, a Bank of America spokeswoman, in a phone interview. She declined to say how many workers may be added.
On June 14, the Financial Supervisory Commission granted Bank of America a license to expand into securities operations. It will arrange structured notes linked to interest rates and currencies, the bank said.
Carlyle considers going public
US private equity firm Carlyle Group LLC is considering going public, potentially following the footsteps of Blackstone Group LP, a managing director of the group said yesterday.
"The Blackstone IPO was highly successful. We are certainly evaluating that option as well," Jason Lee, Carlyle's managing director and head of the group's real estate division in Asia, told Dow Jones Newswires.
"No decisions have been made, and we will do what we believe is best for our investors," Lee said on the sidelines of a real estate conference in Singapore.
Blackstone's US$4.13 billion initial public offering last week has been closely watched by other firms, and reports have recently surfaced that another giant buyout group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, is planning its own IPO.
New Taiwan dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar weakened on speculation a rally to a five-month high encouraged importers to convert the currency to US dollars to pay for goods bought overseas.
The NT dollar declined NT$0.021 to close at NT$32.785 against the US counterpart on the Taipei Forex Inc. Turnover was US$1.230 billion.
The local currency has risen 2 percent since reaching a 17-month low on May 22, partly on speculation the central bank purchased it to halt five months of losses.
Sadaaki Kondou, assistant general manager of treasury at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd, said the central bank may be comfortable if the currency is trading between NT$32.50 and NT$33.
Ministry welcomes alliance
Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) said yesterday he welcomed a proposed alliance between China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation's largest steelmaker, and the steelmaking unit of Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團).
Chen's remark came after the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported that China Steel will pursue a plan to form a strategic alliance with the Formosa Plastics Group, citing China Steel's incoming chairman Lin Wen-yuan (林文淵).
As part of the strategic alliance, Formosa Plastics Group will reserve 3 percent of the shares and one board seat in its new steel venture for China Steel, the report said.
Taiwan firms robust in China
The accumulated turnover of the top 1,000 Taiwan-funded companies in China could outpace that of the top 1,000 corporations in Taiwan in five years, according to a new report.
The report, prepared by the Taipei-based China Credit Information Service Ltd (CCIS, 中華徵信所), said the top 1,000 Taiwan-funded companies posted an average 45.88 percent year-on-year growth in business turnover last year, far exceeding the average 16.03 percent increase that was registered by their Taiwan-based counterparts.
If the trend continues, the report said, the top 1,000 Taiwan-funded companies will outshine their Taiwan parents in terms of revenues by 2012.
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