Shares close 1.21% lower
Share prices closed down 1.21 percent yesterday after another Wall Street dive on concerns over the US mortgage market, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 87.80 points at 7,156.96, off a low of 7,140.47 and a high of 7,270.49, on turnover of NT$94.87 billion (US$3.12 billion).
Grand Cathay Securities (大華證券) analyst Mars Hsu said foreign institutional investors were major sellers.
“Volatility on Wall Street has further weakened market confidence. Once negative factors emerged, investors rushed to cut positions,” Hsu said, referring to worries over the health of US firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“That’s why heavyweight financial stocks led the broader market down,” Hsu said.
Regulators have found that local banks and insurers have bought notes issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but said there had been no need yet to make any provisions.
Dealers said investors would continue to take cues from the US market and oil price movements.
Uni adds Matsu flight
Uni Air (立榮航空) has decided to add one flight daily to its Taipei-Matsu route from Aug. 1 in line with the government’s policy of expanding the “small three links” between Taiwan and China, the airline said yesterday.
The added flight will depart from Taipei’s Songshan Airport and return from Matsu’s Nangan Airport (南竿), the airline said.
The airline will also replace its 37-seat DH-200 aircraft with a 56-seat DH-300 plane on one of its daily flights to boost passenger capacity.
The airline said it will make adjustments monthly to its schedule, if necessary, to meet Matsu’s transportation needs.
The “small three links” refer to direct shipping and trade links between Taiwan’s outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu and the Chinese ports of Xiamen, Mawei and Quanzhou in Fujian Province.
Chunghwa, CMC sign contracts
OC Oerlikon Corp, the world’s biggest maker of thin-film solar panel equipment, won two contracts from Sunwell, a unit of CMC Magnetics Corp (中環公司) in Taiwan.
Pfaeffikon, Switzerland-based Oerlikon also began a partnership with Flextronics International Inc to help increase capacity more quickly, Oerlikon said in two e-mailed statements yesterday.
Meanwhile, Nokia Siemens Networks, the world’s second-biggest maker of wireless networks, won a contract valued at 72 million euros (US$114 million) from Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) in Taiwan.
Nokia Siemens will upgrade Chunghwa’s third-generation wireless network, the Espoo, Finland-based company said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.
Epson unveils new inkjet
Epson Taiwan Technology & Trading Ltd (臺灣愛普生), the nation’s largest inkjet printer maker, yesterday launched its latest inkjet printer B-508DN, targeting business users.
The new printer, priced at NT$19,900 (US$654.64), features a large-capacity ink cartridge, allowing it to print over 7,000 pages, without replacements.
“By using a 1,000 page monthly printout estimate, users over a span of three years can save over 74 percent of total cost, as opposed to using comparable laser printers currently out in the market,” company sales manager Eugene Chen (陳郁仁) said yesterday.
The company vowed to take up a 50 percent market share three years from now from its current 46 percent as of the first quarter.
NT weakens against dollar
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday weakened by NT$0.012 to close at NT$30.404 against the greenback on turnover of US$526 million.
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],”
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
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