Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation's biggest telecom operator, said yesterday it was evaluating the feasibility of increasing its stake in Taipei Financial Center Corp (台北金融大樓公司), the operator of the world's tallest skyscraper, Taipei 101.
This was part of the telecom firm's bigger intention to tap into the nation's property market after the carrier said last month it would spend NT$5 billion to set up a property development and management subsidiary by the end of the year at the earliest.
Shares of Chunghwa Telecom rose 1.04 percent to NT$58.5, outpacing the benchmark TAIEX index's 0.17 percent gain.
under review
"We are evaluating [the case]. I cannot comment further as this is confidential," Chunghwa Telecom spokesman Chang Feng-hsiung (張豐雄) said by telephone.
Chunghwa Telecom holds 11.76 percent of Taipei Financial Center's shares, Ministry of Economic Affairs data showed.
Chang's comment came after the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday that Chunghwa Telecom intended to purchase the 15 percent stake, or 370.34 million shares of Taipei Financial Center, owned by financially distressed China United Trust Investment Corp (中聯信託).
China United Trust went into receivership in March, with the state-run Central Deposit Insurance Co (
failed auction
Central Deposit Insurance failed to sell China United's holding of Taipei Financial Center early this month, as no bidder joined the first-round auction. The minimum bid price was set at NT$3.69 billion (US$112 million), or NT$9.97 per share.
Central Deposit Insurance had informed the original investors of Taipei Financial Center -- Chunghwa Telecom, China Development Industrial Bank (
If none of the three showed any interest, Central Deposit Insurance will hold a second round of bidding, the report 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
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
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],”
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