Shin Kong Bank shuffles board
Shin Kong Bank (新光銀行), a subsidiary of Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), yesterday reshuffled its 10-member board of directors and added two independent directors, promoting its former president Lee Tseng-chang (李增昌) to the chairmanship.
Lee will replace Patrick Liang (梁成金) as chairman and double as the bank’s interim president, the bank said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Lee said he hoped to locate a new president soon either by promotion within the bank or recruiting someone from outside, local media reported.
The bank yesterday posted NT$787 million (US$24.45 million) in net profits for the first eight months of this year, or NT$0.4 per share.
Mega writes down securities
Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), Taiwan’s third-biggest finance company by market value, said its banking unit wrote down the value of securities linked to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc by an additional US$40 million.
Taipei-based Mega Financial made the disclosure in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange late on Thursday night.
Mega International Commercial Bank Co (兆豐國際商銀) on Sept. 22 wrote down the value of Lehman-related asset-backed commercial paper by NT$1.9 billion (NT$59 million). The lender holds about US$115 million in Lehman notes, Mega Financial said.
Asset-backed commercial paper is a short-term investment vehicle collateralized by other financial assets.
Inflation pressure easing: Perng
The nation’s inflation pressure will continue to ease, central bank Governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南) said, signaling he may add to last month’s interest-rate cut.
The nation’s economic growth has slowed and the inflation rate has fallen, Perng said in a prepared statement to be delivered to the legislature’s finance committee on Oct. 6.
The central bank is concerned about faltering global growth, he said.
The central bank on Sept. 25 unexpectedly reduced interest rates for the first time since 2003, joining counterparts in China, Australia and New Zealand in lowering borrowing costs as a deepening US financial crisis dims growth prospects.
Taiwan had gold reserves of 13.5 million ounces as of the end of August, Perng’s report said, without giving comparative figures.
Taiyen names acting chairman
The board of state-run Taiyen Biotech Co (臺鹽), formerly known as Taiwan Salt Industrial Corp, yesterday approved the appointment of Fan Liang-tung (范良棟), former executive secretary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs Investment Commission, as acting chairman.
Fan was chosen to fill the vacancy left by former chairman Wu Chun-i (吳俊億), who recently resigned from his post to avoid having to declare his assets under a new government regulation.
The regulation requires all board directors and supervisors of state-owned enterprises and government-subsidized non-profit institutions to make public their assets, effective from Wednesday.
NT dollar posts weekly loss
The New Taiwan dollar completed a weekly loss as a lack of confidence in global credit markets fueled demand for the US currency and damped investor appetite for emerging-market assets.
The NT dollar fell NT$0.027, or 0.1 percent, to close at NT$32.187 against the US currency yesterday, according to Taipei Forex Inc. It dropped 0.4 percent this week after touching NT$32.368 on Sept. 30, the weakest since January.
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