Wall Street, oil hurt shares
Shares closed 1.01 percent lower yesterday on worries over high crude oil prices and Wall Street's lackluster performance overnight, dealers said.
Concerns over President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) efforts to push a referendum on seeking UN membership despite opposition by Washington and Beijing also weighed on sentiment, they said.
The TAIEX closed down 90.70 points at 8,927.42 off a low of 8,924.62. It reached a high of 9,062.31. Turnover was NT$112.53 billion (US$3.41 billion).
Decliners outnumbered advancers 1,331 to 408, with 249 stocks unchanged.
Fuhwa Securities Corp (復華證券) assistant vice president Samson Chueh (闕山雄) said many investors were watching developments in the US.
"Investors here continued to wait for the Fed's rate decision and developments in the US market," he said, referring to an expected cut is US borrowing rates later this month.
On the foreign exchange market, the New Taiwan dollar rose NT$0.003 to close at NT$33.066 against its US counterpart.
Turnover was US$711 million on the Taipei Forex Inc, up from US$671 million the previous day.
FSC backs amendment
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday gave a green light to an amended bill on the establishment of new financial holding companies.
The amendment raises the threshold for setting up new financial holdings to NT$60 billion (US$1.8 billion) in capitalization from NT$20 billion.
The commission also said new financial holdings would need to have NT$750 billion in assets, more than double the previous NT$300 billion.
The announcement came after its policymaking members gave the go-ahead to the amendment in a meeting earlier yesterday.
The government has given approval to 14 financial holding firms to operate in this country.
Taipei Fubon secures lottery
The Ministry of Finance is expected to confirm that Taipei Fubon Bank (台北富邦銀行) will operate the national sports lottery, after the Financial Supervisory Commission affirmed the bank's bidding credentials, National Treasury Agency Director-General Su Le-ming (蘇樂明) said yesterday.
Taipei Fubon Bank won the license last Monday, but the official announcement was delayed as competitor Bank of Kaohsiung (高雄銀行) questioned the fairness of the selection procedure, saying Taipei Fubon was not qualified because of prior wrongdoing.
According to the rules, bidders should not have committed any major violation of financial regulations in the year before the deadline for bid submissions.
Daniel Chiang (蔣國樑), chief investment officer of the bank's parent company, Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), was detained last month on alleged insider trading. But the Financial Supervisory Commission said this was the act of an individual and not directly linked to the bank.
More stores for President
President Chain Store Corp (統一超商), the largest convenience-store operator in the nation, said yesterday it was planning to open 200 supermarkets in China's Shandong Province by 2010.
Shandong PCSC Ginza Supermarket (山東統一銀座), of which President Chain Store owns 55 percent, also aims to attain sales of 1.5 billion yuan (US$199 million) in 2010, against 600 million yuan targeted for this year.
Established in July 2005, the joint venture now has 52 supermarket outlets in Shandong.
It made a profit of 7.0 million yuan on sales of 430 million yuan last year, while the profit target for this year is 20 million yuan.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six