Standard takes the blame
Standard Chartered Plc said it would take responsibility for cases where the methods of selling investment products did not meet its standards.
The lender found “individual cases that may not have met the bank’s internal standards,” Ben Hung (洪丕正), chief executive officer of Standard Chartered in Hong Kong, said in comments made in an e-mail. He didn’t elaborate.
Standard Chartered sold equity-linked notes issued by the collapsed Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc to 2,200 investors in Hong Kong, Hung said. Investors in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan have demanded banks compensate them for these investments, some of which have become worthless after Lehman’s bankruptcy.
Wistron up 65 percent
Wistron Corp (緯創), one of Taiwan’s leading computer and peripheral products original design manufacturers (ODM), said yesterday its revenues reached NT$53.50 billion (US$1.63 billion) last month, which reflected a 64.83-percent increase from the same month last year.
Accumulated revenues for the year to last month were NT$354.15 billion, up 59.16 percent from NT$222.47 billion at the same time last year, the company said in a statement.
Sales of notebook and netbook computers, desktop computers and other mobile devices totaled NT$48.79 billion last month, with notebook/netbook computers taking the biggest share at 80.5 percent, the company said.
‘Asus brand’ posts NT$26.7bn
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) yesterday said that its “Asus brand” revenues for last month were NT$26.7 billion (US$813.8 million).
Consolidated sales for the “Asus brand” include sales made at Asus and regional sales centers in Taiwan, Singapore and Netherlands. Some small overseas offices were not included, the company said.
Last month, unaudited revenue decreased 12 percent from a month earlier and increased 9 percent from the same time last year.
Accumulated revenues for the period from January to last month reached NT$226 billion, compared with last year’s corresponding figure of NT$179.6 billion, representing an increase of 25.8 percent year-over-year.
China Steel revenue rises
China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation’s largest steel producer, said its unaudited revenue rose 33.46 percent year-on-year to NT$24.62 billion last month (US$728 million).
Compared with the previous month, the revenue only increased 1.02 percent, the Kaohsiung-based company said in a statement.
Currency slides to NT$32.187
The New Taiwan dollar weakened against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.027 to close at NT$32.187.
A total of US$922 million changed hands during the day.
Ford loses US$129 million
Ford Motor Co said it lost US$129 million in the third quarter as the struggling automaker burned up US$7.7 billion in cash.
The automaker also said yesterday it would cut another 10 percent of its North American salaried work force as it tries to weather the worst economic downturn in decades.
Ford said it lost US$0.06 per share for the quarter, compared with a loss of US$380 million, or US$0.19 per share, a year ago.
Sales fell 22 percent to US$32.1 billion from US$41.1 billion because of lower volume and the sale of Jaguar and Land Rover.
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