Shares close up 0.7 percent
Taiwanese shares closed up 0.7 percent yesterday because of a rally in select electronic stocks, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 31.51 points to 4,526.1, on turnover of NT$59.32 billion (US$1.74 billion).
Gainers led losers by 888 to 629 with 234 stocks unchanged.
A total of 37 shares closed 7 percent limit-up against 17 that were limit-down.
“The market was slightly up today on the strong performance of some semiconductor, DRAM and LED shares,” said Allen Lin of Concord Securities (康和證券), projecting the index could rise to 4,817 points this week if trading volume increased.
Aegon looking for a buyer
Dutch life insurance and pension provider Aegon NV (全球人壽) is looking for a buyer to purchase its Taiwan operations, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday.
Aegon is looking for potential buyers among domestic financial service providers and insurance companies to buy its Taipei arm for NT$4 billion, the report said.
The Dutch insurer’s Taipei arm declined to comment on the report when approached by the Taipei Times. A person familiar with the situation, however, told Dow Jones Newswires on the condition of anonymity that selling the Taiwanese unit would give Aegon “some capital relief.”
The Financial Supervisory Commission declined to comment after receiving no response to its inquiries from Aegon Taiwan.
Non-performing loans drop
The ratio of non-performing loans (NPLs) in both the credit-card and cash-card markets continued to decrease to 1.59 percent and 3.586 percent respectively in December, Financial Supervisory Commission statistics showed.
The figures released yesterday by the Banking Bureau showed a 0.06 percent month-on-month decline in the credit-card market’s bad loans and a 0.76 percent drop in cash-card market bad loans, an FSC statement said.
As of December, total lending reached NT$122.7 billion (US$3.6 billion) and NT$87.7 billion respectively at 40 credit-card issuers and cash-card issuers.
Among the 40 credit-card issuers, Chinfon Commercial Bank (慶豐銀行) had the highest bad-loan ratio at 4.7 percent, while the other 39 issuers had NPL ratios below 3 percent.
Chinfon also had the highest bad-loan ratio in the cash-card market at 8.172 percent, followed by the Development Bank of Singapore (星展銀行) at 6.489 percent and Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) at 4.578 percent.
Twelve issuers had bad-loan ratios below 3 percent.
Tax revenues down 40 percent
The national treasury collected NT$74.7 billion (US$2.199 billion) in tax revenues last month, down NT$50 billion, or 40.1 percent, from the same period last year, chiefly because of the economic slump and a shorter month, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Business tax saw a drop of 53.7 percent to NT$2 billion, or a decrease of NT$25.2 billion from a year earlier, Lin Lee-jen (林麗貞), head of the statistics department, told a press conference.
Levies on securities transactions fell NT$6.9 billion from last year, followed by commodity and personal income taxes, which dropped NT$6.6 billion and NT$5.1 billion respectively, Lin said. Taxes on increased land value fell NT$3.3 billion, Lin said.
NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, falling NT$0.006 to close at NT$33.967. Turnover was US$867 million.
STAFF WRITER, WITH AGENCIES
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained