Bargain-hunting boosts TAIEX
Share prices closed up 0.85 percent yesterday as bargain hunters bought into the bellwether electronics sector, shrugging off a fall on Wall Street, dealers said.
The TAIEX rose 38.59 points to 4,557.15 on turnover of NT$68.85 billion (US$1.97 billion).
Gainers led losers by 1,132 to 454 with 245 stocks unchanged.
The market opened 0.11 percent higher despite the Wall Street weakness and the momentum extended until the end of the session amid adequate liquidity with investors targeting cheap high tech heavyweights, dealers said.
“Valuations of electronic stocks look very attractive after recent steep falls,” Mega Securities (兆豐證券) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said.
“With interest rates at lows, long-term investors scrambled to seek buying opportunities in the capital market,” he said.
Huang said he suspected major shareholders of listed companies stood behind the upside ahead of annual general meetings scheduled by the end of June.
Several banks eyeing Chinfon
Standard Chartered Plc is among bidders for troubled Chinfon Bank (慶豐銀行), the Chinese-language Apple Daily reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information.
The government is auctioning Chinfon after seizing control of the bank last September.
Other interested parties include US private equity firm Olympus Partners, as well as Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行) and Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控), the paper said.
Mega writes off securities
Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), the nation’s third-largest listed financial services company, said in an exchange filing yesterday that its banking unit wrote off US$6.7 million on the value of residential mortgage-backed securities.
Juice deal faces opposition
US beverage giant Coca-Cola is facing opposition from some of its board members over a bid to take over Huiyuan Juice Group (匯源果汁), a media report said yesterday, citing the Chinese drink company’s head.
“Coca-Cola said it was under rather big pressure as there was rising opposition from its board of directors,” said Huiyuan chairman Zhu Xinli (朱新禮), according to popular Chinese portal Sina.com.
However, Zhu said Coca-Cola had not changed the plan to buy into the Chinese juice producer, the report said.
China’s Commerce Ministry is conducting an anti-monopoly review of the deal, under which Coca-Cola would spend US$2.4 billion to buy Hong Kong-listed Huiyuan.
Zhu said the takeover plan covered only the listed arm of Huiyuan Group, did not include the Chinese firm’s fruit farms and would not affect its factories, of which there are more than 20, the Sina report said.
NT dollar hits five-year low
The New Taiwan dollar fell to the lowest level in more than five years on concern sliding exports and a shrinking economy will deter investment in the country’s assets.
The NT dollar fell to NT$34.95 versus the greenback as of the 4pm close, sliding 0.4 percent this week, Taipei Forex Inc said. It touched NT$35.008 yesterday, the lowest level since April 2003.
The local currency dropped 3.3 percent this month, the third-worst performance among the 10 most-active Asian currencies outside Japan, as unemployment rose to a seven-year high last month and export orders and industrial production plunged.
“In the short run, we think the downside risk is still there,” said Tomo Kinoshita, an economist at Nomura Holdings Inc in Hong Kong. “The degree of downturn in Asian economies has been surprisingly substantial.”
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],”
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
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