TAIEX closes lower
Taiwan share prices closed 0.30 percent lower yesterday amid doubts over whether the US economy will be able to avert a recession despite another 50 basis point interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve overnight, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed down 22.37 points at 7,521.13 off a low of 7,400.74 and a high of 7,579.43. Turnover was NT$124.22 billion (US$3.86 billion).
Decliners outnumbered advancers 1,306 to 617, with 401 stocks unchanged.
On the foreign exchange market, the New Taiwan dollar ended at 32.198 to the US dollar, up NT$0.05 from the previous close.
Storms' impact small: Formosa
Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑) said the snow storm in central and southern China had little impact on its operations there.
"Our factories are in Ningpo, Zhejiang Province, but our operations had little impact from the storm," a company official said.
The official, who declined to be named, said that business remains "normal."
Formosa Plastics produces polyvinyl chloride, acrylic esters and polypropylene, which are key components used in consumer goods, textiles and plastic products, respectively.
Chinatrust approves new head
The board of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) yesterday approved the promotion of James Chen (陳佳文) as president, replacing James Sheu (許建基). Chen is currently president of the company's institutional group.
The board also appointed Daniel Wu (吳一揆) as its chief investment officer while Oliver Shang (尚瑞強) was promoted to president of subsidiary Chinatrust Commercial Bank's (中信銀) personal banking, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
NPL drop helps banks
The local banking sector's asset quality inched up with its non-performing loan (NPL) ratio dropping 0.29 percentage points month-on-month to 1.84 percent last month, Financial Supervisory Commission statistics showed.
The nation's 39 domestic banks had a total of NT$328.1 billion (US$10 billion) in bad loans by the end of December -- a fall of NT$49.5 billion from November, the commission's data showed.
Twenty-nine of the 39 banks maintained an NPL ratio of less than 2.5 percent and the ratio for another six banks ranged between 2.5 percent and 5 percent. Chinfon Bank (慶豐銀行) remains to be the worst-performing bank among the remaining four.
Titanium credit card launched
E.Sun Bank (玉山銀行) yesterday teamed up with MasterCard Worldwide and launched the nation's first titanium credit card, targeting women cardholders with an interest in fashion, shopping benefits and cash rebates.
"The spending power of female cardholders is on the rise with a lower default risk than male cardholders," said Ben Chen (陳炳良), senior executive vice president of E.Sun's credit card division.
As an upgrade from platinum cards, the newly launched titanium card may be able to attract a potential market of 6 million people, half of the nation's 12 million platinum cardholders, MasterCard's senior vice president Tina Chiang (江威娜) said.
Bank lowers forecasts
Standard Chartered Bank lowered its forecasts for the South Korean won, the New Taiwan dollar and the Philippine peso for the second and third quarters on speculation a US recession will steer investors away from emerging markets.
Standard Chartered "strongly disagrees" with the decoupling theory that Asian markets will be insulated from a US slowdown.
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