Evertrust opens VIP outlet
Evertrust Rehouse Group (永慶房仲集團) yesterday inaugurated a VIP outlet in downtown Taipei to provide upscale customers with one-on-one advice on real estate deals.
Evertrust chairman Sun Ching-yu (孫慶餘) said his group put together a consultant team of 20 agents selected from among its 1,200 employees nationwide.
By mounting the new venture, the group seeks to reverse its falling corporate performance caused by shrinking demand as well as overpricing, Sun said.
Customers will have to make an appointment before visiting the outlet on Renai Road Sec 4, Evertrust said.
Regulator warns stock traders
The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday urged company employees not to trade company shares within 12 hours of their company’s board finalizing any share buyback proposal to avoid violating insider trading regulations.
The commission’s media statement yesterday cited Article 157-1 of the Securities and Exchange Law (證券交易法), which regulates employees’ trading of shares.
Employees who have not been informed of company policies can trade shares any time they prefer and would not be accused of insider trading, the commission’s statement said.
BOFT targets emerging markets
The Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) will draw up exclusive programs targeting emerging markets to help stimulate Taiwan’s economy, bureau Director-General Huang Chih-peng (黃志鵬) said.
Huang, who is visiting India, said prior to his departure for a trade promotion tour that his bureau would target India, Russia and countries in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America to boost exports in line with an economic stimulus package approved by the Executive Yuan.
In a concerted move with the Executive Yuan’s efforts to boost exports, Huang said, the BOFT would increase its subsidies to Taiwanese companies that participate in trade fairs in emerging economies — a move that Huang said would help spur exports to these markets.
Chunghwa to buy equipment
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan’s largest phone operator, will purchase networking equipment worth NT$1.2 billion (US$37.5 million) from HwaCom Systems Inc (華電聯網).
HwaCom will supply the phone carrier with broadband Internet equipment over the next year, Chunghwa said. The gear will be used to connect fiber-optic networks to buildings and so-called Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Lines version 2, or VDSL2, to a user’s premises.
TWSE plans seminars abroad
The Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TWSE) will hold a series of investment seminars in Japan and various European countries later this month as part of its efforts to seek foreign investors, a TWSE executive said yesterday.
TWSE Chairman Schive Chi (薛琦) will first attend a Sept. 23 business forum organized by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, a brokerage and investment banking group headquartered in Hong Kong, in which he will give a speech about Taiwan’s business environment.
After the forum, the TWSE, in cooperation with Taiwan’s Daiwa Securities SMBC-Cathay Co, will hold 50 business seminars in Tokyo from Sept. 25 to introduce Taiwan’s environment and policies.
Another 50 seminars will be held by the two institutes in Zurich, Geneva and Milan from Sept. 29 to Oct. 3, targeting European investors, the executive said.
The TWSE has previously held a series of business seminars in Dubai, Egypt, Vietnam and Malaysia to promote Taiwan’s investment advantages.
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