TAIEX rises slightly
Taiwanese shares gained 0.65 percent yesterday as investors hunted for bargains among shares likely to benefit from the expected opposition victory in weekend presidential elections, dealers said.
The weighted index closed up 52.36 points or 0.65 percent at 8,057.82, off a low of 7,955.48 and a high of 8,082.57, with NT$102.28 billion (US$3.3 billion) changing hands.
Risers led decliners 1,108 to 915, with 336 stocks remaining unchanged.
Eighteen stocks closed limit-up and 47 were limit-down.
UMC up after dividend plan
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world's second-largest custom-chip maker, rose the most in a month in Taipei trading after proposing an increase in the cash dividend for last year.
UMC gained 3.3 percent to NT$17.35 at the close of trade, the most since Feb. 14.
Hsinchu-based UMC plans to pay out NT$0.75 per share for last year, compared with NT$0.70 the year before.
It also plans to issue 45 new shares for each 1,000 held, the company said in a filing to the exchange on Monday.
CITIC drops Bear Stearns plan
China's CITIC Securities (中信證券) said yesterday it would pull out of an investment plan in Bear Stearns after the announcement that the troubled US bank was being sold at a fire-sale price to JPMorgan Chase.
"The foundation and premise for the strategic cooperation plan no longer exists," CITIC Securities said in a statement.
CITIC Securities said that the company has ceased all discussions with Bear Stearns on a cross-investment and cooperation plan and that the two companies would not sign any agreements in the future.
China to raise reserve ratio
China's central bank yesterday announced it would raise the amount of money that commercial banks must keep in reserve by half a percentage point as part of efforts to cool the economy.
The People's Bank of China said in a statement the bank reserve ratio would rise to 15.5 percent from Tuesday next week.
The rise is "in order to implement the requirements of tight monetary policy and continue to strengthen management of liquidity in the banking system and to guide the rational growth in money supply and credit," the bank said.
The increase, the second this year and the 12th since the beginning of last year, reduces the amount of money flowing through the economy.
China is trying to tame inflation that hit a 12-year high of 8.7 percent last month while cooling an economy that expanded by 11.4 percent last year.
SocGen trader to leave prison
A Paris court ruled yesterday that Jerome Kerviel, the trader accused of causing record losses at French bank Societe Generale, could leave prison pending investigation, lawyers attending the court session said.
In January, SocGen unveiled 4.9 billion euros (US$7.73 billion) of losses that it said were caused by rogue deals carried out by Kerviel, who had a junior trading position at the bank.
Kerviel has been placed under formal investigation for breach of trust, computer abuse and falsification. He was expected to leave prison late yesterday after being held for five weeks.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange Tuesday, rising NT$0.103 to close at NT$30.747.
A total of US$1.14 billion changed hands yesterday.
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