Ministry to release bonds
The Ministry of Finance plans to issue government bonds worth NT$3.5 billion (US$115.4 million) next week to help fund public works, according to a ministry press statement released on Thursday.
The ministry said that it intended to issue the 10-year government bonds with an interest rate of 2.375 percent. The bonds are set to be auctioned on Tuesday and will be released on Friday. Interested buyers may file for the purchase with authorized financial institutions
'Quake lake' in new threat
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC, 中石油集團) on Thursday said the threat of a swollen “quake lake,” which could overflow in China’s Sichuan Province, had put the country’s longest oil pipeline at risk.
The pipeline is 60km downstream from the landslide-created Tangjiashan lake, CNPC said in a statement on its Web site.
CNPC said the pipeline was designed to withstand water pressure five times weaker than that which could come coursing through the region if the rubble dam bursts.
As the only refined oil pipeline in southwestern China, it supplies 70 percent of oil products used in Sichuan and the neighboring municipality of Chongqing, the statement said.
GIC to take UBS shares
The Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC) yesterday said it would subscribe to a share issue from embattled Swiss bank UBS, which has written down more than US$37 billion after the subprime crisis.
“Yes, I can confirm it,” GIC head of communications Jennifer Lewis said, declining to give the value of the investment.
“GIC currently owns a relatively small position in UBS common stock, approximately 0.4 percent. We will subscribe fully to the new shares for our holdings in the UBS common stock,” she said.
GIC announced in December that it would inject 11 billion Swiss francs (US$10.6 billion) into UBS after the bank revealed multibillion-dollar losses from US subprime mortgage investments.
Citigroup pulls plug in Japan
Citigroup Inc, the biggest US bank by assets, will withdraw from the consumer finance business in Japan to transfer capital to more profitable areas.
Citigroup will close all of its 32 branches and 540 automated loan machines as it halts marketing of consumer finance operations in Japan, the New York-based company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
“We have taken a series of significant steps globally to strengthen the balance sheet, improve risk management, and reorganize the company, which have put Citi on the path to future growth driven by its core businesses,” Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit said in the statement.
Blackstone's Shanghai foray
US private equity giant Blackstone has made its first foray into China’s property market, investing 1.1 billion yuan (US$158.9 million) in a Shanghai commercial building, state media said yesterday.
Blackstone bought a 90 percent stake in the downtown building from Hong Kong-based developer VXL Capital Ltd, the Shanghai Securities News reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources.
VXL acquired the property for around 585 million yuan in 2006, the report said. It will retain a 10 percent stake in the property, the newspaper added.
NT dollar rises
The NT dollar rose against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, edging up NT$0.057 to close at NT$30.335.
A total of US$1.02 billion changed hands during the day’s trading.
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