Shares remain steady
Shares closed little changed yesterday as bargain-hunting emerged to trim early losses in the wake of Wall Street's overnight downturn, following disappointing US corporate results and growing concern over sub-prime mortgage problems, dealers said.
Although some investors opted to lock in profits accumulated in recent sessions, many remain bullish on a market they believe is still on track to breach the 10,000 points level on the benchmark index, they said.
The TAIEX fell 3.93 points to 9,740.13 on turnover of NT$256.53 billion (US$7.82 billion).
On the Taipei foreign exchange market, the New Taiwan dollar fell against the greenback yesterday.
The NT dollar fell NT$0.034 to close at NT$32.792 on the Taipei Forex Inc on turnover of US$746.5 million.
BenQ might countersue
BenQ Corp (明基) said yesterday that it might file countersuits against insolvency administrator Martin Prager of BenQ Mobile GmbH & Co, a company statement said.
BenQ said it is considering the counteraction to protect its reputation, after the administrator of the bankrupt German subsidiary earlier filed two lawsuits against the company in Europe.
Prager had earlier filed two lawsuits against the Taiwanese company in Munich, seeking a total of 83.1 million euros (US$114.5 million) in payments.
"The lawsuits arose out of certain account payables" made by the unit to the parent company last year, and the suits were filed with a court in Munich, Germany, BenQ said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The statement said that the lawsuits filed by BenQ Mobile would not affect BenQ's operations or its financial conditions.
Innolux planning new plant
Innolux Display Corp (群創光電), the world's second-biggest liquid-crystal-display (LCD) computer monitor maker, yesterday said it planned to build a next-generation plant in the first quarter of next year to make computer and television panels.
Innolux, which also makes LCD panels, said it had not settled on the scale of the investment nor on the glass substrates it would manufacture.
Innolux said it planned to raise funds for the new plant via issuing new shares, bank loans and its own cash flow. The size of the fund was not announced. The company now operates two plants -- a 4.5-G and a 5G -- in Miaoli County.
New appointments named
The Ministry of Finance said yesterday it had appointed Tsai Ching-nain (蔡慶年), director-general of the National Treasury Agency, as president of the state-run Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行). Su Le-ming (蘇樂明), chief of the ministry's Financial Data Center, will replace Tsai, a statement said.
Meanwhile, Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) yesterday announced that Joy Huang (黃志宜), vice president of subsidiary Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託商銀), will be Taiwan Lottery Co's (台灣彩券公司) next president. Huang will fill a vacancy left by Chang Ruu-tian (張汝恬), who resigned over blunders in the operation of the Public Welfare Lottery.
Formosa Petro eyes Guatemala
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) representatives met with Guatemalan President Oscar Berger Perdomo and Guatemalan officials on Tuesday to discuss building an oil refinery in the Central American country.
According to an AFP report on Monday, the Formosa Petrochemical representatives were visiting Guatemala City to assess the feasibility of a US$7.2 billion refinery and to gain a better understanding of local laws governing major industrial ventures by foreign firms.
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