TAIEX down 0.5 percent
Taiwanese shares closed 0.5 percent lower in quiet trade yesterday as investors took cues from Wall Street’s weak close amid fears of a collapse at General Motors, dealers said.
The weighted index was off 23 points at 4,615.57 on turnover of NT$46.18 billion (US$1.41 billion).
“The international financial turmoil may come to an end, at least for a while, but the fears of a global recession and poor corporate news are prevailing,” said Alex Huang (黃國偉) of Mega International Investment Services (兆豐證券).
“Should General Motors collapse, its impacts would be massive,” he said.
He said the detention of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on corruption charges, ordered by a district court following an overnight hearing, had a limited impact on the local stock market.
Analysts expected continued consolidation within a 4,500 to 4,800 point range over the next few trading sessions.
Acer chief optimistic
Wang Jeng-tang (王振堂), chairman of Acer Inc, the world’s third-largest computer supplier, said he expects the stimulus package announced by China last week to boost the global economy.
“I personally expect that through so many major countries’ drastic actions, maybe after two to three months the panic will go away,” Wang said at a Chinese business leaders’ meeting in Taipei yesterday.
The Chinese government intends to spend 4 trillion yuan (US$586 billion) to stimulate the economy, which Chinese Foreign Minister Qing Gang (秦剛) said on Tuesday would help promote “healthy, stable global economic development.”
Acer’s share of the Chinese computer market is too small to be helped by the government measures, Wang said.
The company makes 4 percent of its sales in China.
Slowing exports a risk
Taiwan’s slowing exports to China pose an increasing risk to the financial sector, the chairman of Sinopac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) said.
“That will further affect the quality of financial institutions in Taiwan, because Taiwan’s economy is so closely linked to … China,” Sean Chen (陳沖), chairman of Taipei-based Sinopac, said in an interview on the sidelines of a business forum yesterday.
Exports to China, which account for 36 percent of Taiwan’s overseas sales, fell 19.9 percent last month from a year earlier.
Sinopac’s banking unit is the ninth-largest of Taiwan’s 38 banks by long-term loan portfolio, bank figures showed.
The company posted a post-tax loss of NT$532 million last month, narrower than the NT$706 million deficit in September.
Hutchison mulls acquisition
Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd (和記電訊國際), billionaire Li Ka-shing’s (李嘉誠) emerging-markets phone company, said it would pay a HK$33.7 billion (US$4.35 billion) special dividend after failing to find an acquisition target.
Hutchison Telecom shares surged as much as 31 percent. Investors will receive HK$7 a share by about Dec. 2, Hutchison Telecom said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange yesterday.
Holders of the company’s American depositary receipts (ADR) would get US$13.55 per ADR, the statement said.
NT dollar drops
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday weakened by NT$0.12 to trade at NT$32.994 against the US dollar on turnover of US$873 million.
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