TAIEX up 0.8 percent
Taiwanese shares closed up 0.8 percent yesterday on the back of a strong overnight rebound on Wall Street and a fall in crude oil prices, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 55.88 points to 7,070.25 on turnover of NT$85.79 billion (US$2.81 billion).
Advancers led decliners 1,162 to 893, with 480 stocks unchanged. A total of 24 stocks closed limit-up and 30 limit-down.
The stock market opened higher due to the US rally but investors were reluctant to push it on, analysts said. The selling pressure mainly stemmed from dumping of big-caps by foreign investors, they said.
Airlines cut flights
Taiwan’s two major carriers, China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), have decided to cut a combined 35 flights per week from Sept. 1 to reduce costs amid rising fuel prices, airline officials said yesterday.
Under the plan, CAL would cut at least 10 flights per week — four flights to Los Angeles, one or two flights to San Francisco and one flight to New York, as well as four flights to Vancouver — a CAL spokesman said.
He said the airline would also suspend all four flights per week to Seattle.
EVA plans to cut 25 flights per week, including six flights to Los Angeles, two flights to San Francisco and one flight to Seattle, EVA officials said.
Innolux to build new unit
Innolux Display Corp (群創光電), a Taiwanese maker of liquid-crystal- display (LCD) monitors, will invest at least US$20 million to build its first factory in Xiamen after the investment project gained approval from the Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday.
The plant will begin operation in the middle of next year and make LCD modules — or partially completed screens — Walter Chen (陳佑忠), a spokesman for Miaoli-based Innolux, said yesterday by telephone.
The Xiamen factory, which would have a production capacity similar to the company’s sixth-generation LCD plant being built in Miaoli, would be Innolux’s first facility near the coastal Chinese city and joins existing units in Shenzhen, Chen said.
Winstron gets buyout approval
Wistron Corp (緯創), the world’s third-largest maker of notebook computers for other companies, won European antitrust approval to buy Lite-On Technology Corp’s (光寶科技) monitor business to secure supply of parts.
Wistron will pay NT$9.2 billion for the business, including inventory, equipment and intellectual property, the Hsinchu-based computer maker said in April.
Public works project approved
The Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) yesterday approved a major public works plan worth NT$207.5 billion for next year that is expected to create 180,000 jobs.
The biggest portion of the budget, NT$80.4 billion or 38.77 percent, would be used to improve the nation’s highways and railways, an e-mailed CEPD statement said.
Some NT$20.8 billion was earmarked for water resource management and flood control, the statement said, adding that an extra NT$19.3 billion would go toward strengthening agricultural infrastructure.
The CEPD said the spending should boost GDP growth by 1.65 percentage points.
NT drops against greenback
The NT dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.045 to close at NT$30.510.
A total of US$1.55 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],”
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