About 300 Idee Department Store (
Protesters opposed the impounding of the Idee brand name by the company's major creditor, Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行), which would make it difficult for the retailer to transfer its ownership to potential buyers, a company representative said yesterday.
China Rebar Co (
PHOTO: CHO YI-CHUN, TAIPEI TIMES
"China Rebar paid a total of NT$1.6 billion between 1999 and 2006 to its debtor, Mega Bank. As China Rebar's Tungshan River Concrete Factory (冬山河水泥廠) in Ilan was pledged as collateral to Mega Bank and is set to be sold for NT$3 billion. These sums together total NT$4.6 billion, far in excess of the NT$3.75 that China Rebar originally borrowed from Mega Bank," Kris Mao (毛幼銘), manager of the sales and promotion department at Idee, said yesterday.
"Mega bank made a filing with the district court on Nov. 6 to impound Idee's brand name, which blocked the possibility of the transfer of Idee's ownership to potential buyers," Mao said, adding the uncertainty over the company's future had affected the lives of Idee's 2,000 employees.
"Our wish is to transfer ownership of the department store to another business for a good price, so that the stores can continue operating without the risk of their becoming another Alexander," Liu Chih-kao (
China Rebar held its first public auction of Idee Department Store on Nov. 26, with a floor price of NT$1.8 billion. Although three potential buyers had expressed an interest prior to the auction, only Shinkong Synthetic Fibers Corp (新光合成纖維) made a bid of NT$705 million, agreeing to be responsible for no less than 10 percent of the debt that Idee owed, Rebecca Ou-yang (歐陽翎), manager of the public relations department at Idee, said in a telephone interview yesterday.
"Although the price that Shinkong offered was lower than the reserve price, the main reason the auction failed was that less than half of the shareholders attended the board meeting," Ou-yang 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],”
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
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