AmCham defends Taiwan’s IPR
The American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Taipei sent a letter again last month to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) asking that the US government remove Taiwan from the “Special 301 Watch List” for intellectual property right (IPR) violations, AmCham’s Topics magazine reported.
The USTR is conducting a second, mid-term review of Taiwan’s status on the watch list after it was kept on the list in March.
AmCham said Taiwan’s continued efforts to improve the IPR environment should justify removing it from the watch list. A decision on the matter should be announced within several months.
PRC production rises
China’s manufacturing expanded for the first time in three months, indicating the economy is weathering the global slowdown. The Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to a seasonally adjusted 51.2 last month from 48.4 in August, the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.
Started in January 2005, the survey tracks changes in output, orders, employment, inventories and prices.
The output index rose to 54.6 last month from 48.7 percent in August, while the index of new orders climbed to 51.3 from 46. The index of export orders increased to 48.8 from 48.4, the statement said.
Hua Nan writes down US$4.7m
Hua Nan Financial Holdings Co (華南金控), the sixth-largest financial-services company in the nation by market value, said its banking unit wrote down NT$152 million (US$4.7 million) in assets linked to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Hua Nan Commercial Bank Ltd (華南銀行) realized US$1.5 million in impairment losses and A$4 million (US$3.2 million) in losses on its holdings of Lehman-related products, the Taipei-based company said in an exchange filing yesterday.
Shin Kong to bolster unit
Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), owner of the nation’s third-largest life insurer, said it plans to pump NT$12.7 billion into Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽).
Shin Kong Financial will subscribe to a NT$8 billion private placement of Shin Kong Life common stock, as well as a NT$4.7 billion preferred share issuance, the Taipei-based company said in a statement on Tuesday night.
Shin Kong Financial may sell the newly issued shares to a third party, with the new-share transaction to take place between Oct. 23 and Nov. 21, it said.
Taiwan eyes emerging markets
Taiwan is looking to emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and the Middle East to boost export orders, which grew at the weakest pace in more than five years in August.
“We must seize opportunities in emerging markets as the decline in the US, which makes up a quarter of global growth, will hurt the international economy and Taiwan’s growth,” Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) said in a speech yesterday.
Export orders rose 5.38 percent in August as orders from China fell and sales to the US slowed, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ data showed.
NT gains ground
The NT dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday on speculation the US Senate would approve a US$700 billion plan to rescue financial companies in the world’s largest economy.
The NT dollar rose NT$0.101 to close at NT$32.029 on the Taipei Foreign Exchange. A total of US$1.177 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
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