Taiwanese shares fall
Taiwanese shares closed down 3.39 percent yesterday as investors took profits, wiping away early gains made on Beijing’s promise to offer loans to Taiwanese investors in China, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 158.98 points to 4,535.54 on turnover of NT$67.15 billion (US$2.07 billion).
The market opened 0.87 percent higher after Chinese banks promised to offer nearly US$19 billion to China-based Taiwanese firms, but profit taking surfaced as the index moved closer to 4,800 points, dealers said.
The financing was part of a package of measures agreed during a two-day meeting in Shanghai of the Cross-Straits Economic, Trade and Cultural Forum over the weekend.
“The early gains were just a knee-jerk reaction to the loan offer. But we need details to evaluate the benefit,” Concord Securities (康和證券) analyst Allen Lin said.
As Wall Street closed mixed despite a White House rescue plan for the US auto industry, investors remained wary of the deteriorating global economy, Lin said.
“Taiwan is still haunted by falling global consumption. It was no surprise to witness the profit taking,” Lin said.
Flat panel makers also gave up earlier gains on profit taking, although China offered to buy US$2 billion in liquid-crystal-display panels from Taiwan, dealers said.
“The market lacked details about the purchase. That’s why investors were reluctant to chase prices,” Lin said.
Hon Hai stock drops
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海), the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, fell the most in more than a week in Taipei trading after the company said it was cutting jobs globally amid an expected recession.
Hon Hai tumbled 6.6 percent to close at NT$64 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the most since Dec. 12.
Hon Hai is “adjusting” its workforce, founder and chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) said after trading closed on Friday, without giving details.
The severity of the recession is three times worse than the company expected, the United Evening News cited Gou as saying the same day.
The electronics maker’s clients, including Apple Inc and Dell Inc, have forecast sales that missed estimates as the credit crisis undermines demand for computers and mobile phones. Hon Hai also faces higher costs from new labor regulations enacted this year by China, where most of its production is based.
The Taipei-based company employed 602,000 people worldwide as of September, its latest financial statement said.
Taiwan’s export orders fell for the first time in six years in October as the global economic slowdown cut demand for chips, laptops and mobile phones.
AmCham elects chairman
American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) yesterday elected Alan Eusden, president of Corning Display Technologies Taiwan (台灣康寧), to be its chairman next year, replacing the outgoing Christopher Fay.
Eusden, who joined Corning last January, yesterday vowed to continue the chamber’s advocacy role.
“2009 will be a challenging year for all businesses, but our intention is to maintain the chamber’s core strengths while helping to improve the business environment for all of our members,” Eusden said in a press statement.
The chamber yesterday also elected Jeffery Nemeth of Ford Lio Ho (福特六和汽車) to be first vice chairman and William Farrell from Boyden global executive search as second vice chairman, the statement said.
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