FSC to lift FIDI cap
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday that it will soon lift the US$5 million cap on foreign individual investors’ (FIDI) share investments.
Commission Vice Chairman Wu Tang-chieh (吳當傑) said that although foreign individuals have not been heavy buyers of shares on the TAIEX, the deregulation will help liberalize the capital market.
The cap was imposed in according with the central bank’s US$5 million cap on domestic investors’ capital outflow although the bank has no intention to scrap the ban, Wu told a press briefing yesterday.
After the commission scrapped the qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) mechanism, there has been no cap on foreign institutional investors’ local share investments, Wu said.
The deregulatory policy will be announced soon and take effect immediately, the commission said.
Nomura wraps up Lehman buy
Nomura Holdings Inc, Japan’s biggest securities firm, said it has mostly completed the purchase of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc’s Asia Pacific units, after a “majority” of the firm’s workers in the region accepted the offer of employment.
Conditions were met to complete the transaction in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, India, Thailand and Japan, Tokyo-based Nomura said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. A spokeswoman for the bank said it’s still awaiting “third party” approvals in Taiwan, China and South Korea. Lehman filed for bankruptcy last month.
Fuel-oil unit restart delayed
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) may delay the restart of a fuel-oil unit by about one week because maintenance work was hampered by typhoons.
The so-called residue desulfurization unit may resume operations on Friday or Saturday, spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said by phone yesterday. The company had planned to restart the 80,000 barrel-a-day unit last Friday after shutting it on Sept. 1 for scheduled repairs, he said.
Formosa Petrochemical is refining about 350,000 barrels of crude oil a day because of the fuel oil unit’s closure, Lin said. The company has three crude distillation units with a combined daily capacity to process 540,000 barrels of oil.
Students win wind power prize
Students from Kaohsiung National First University of Science and Technology won an award yesterday for creative application at the 2008 National Wind Power Invention Contest with their wind-powered bicycle headlight.
The headlight utilizes head-on wind while the bike is in motion to generate electricity as a source of energy for the headlight. The electricity is saved in rechargeable batteries and may be used to power a small fan when the cyclist stops at traffic lights.
Tsann Kuen unit sues T-Fal
A unit of Tsann Kuen Enterprise Co (燦坤實業), the country’s largest electronics retailer, sued a subsidiary of Groupe SEB UK Ltd for patent infringement.
T-Fal, the SEB unit based in West Orange, New Jersey, is accused of infringing Tsan Kuen USA’s patent 5,606,905 for a portable electric cooking device. The patent, which was issued in March 1997, covers an electric tabletop grill on which meat can be cooked without oil or fat.
Tsann Kuen asked the US District Court, Eastern District of Texas, to order T-Fal to stop its infringement and for unspecified damages and attorney fees.
NT dollar unchanged
The New Taiwan dollar remained unchanged against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday at NT$32.388. A total of US$1.197 billion changed hands during the day’s trading.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”