TAIEX rises on order rush
Taiwanese shares closed up 2.11 percent yesterday amid investor optimism spurred by reports of rush orders for electronic products, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 95.78 points to 4,637.2 on turnover of NT$106.78 billion (US$3.07 billion).
Gainers outnumbered losers 1,363 to 405, while 131 shares were unchanged.
“Market sentiment is turning slightly for the better after an increasing number of signs indicated that the pessimism which had weighed down the market might be too much,” said Alex Huang (黃國偉) of Mega International Investment Services (兆豐國際投顧).
Huang expected the uptrend to continue until next month when local makers start delivery for the rush orders they recently received.
Court approves restructuring
First International Telecom Corp (大眾電信), the nation’s only supplier of short-range telecom services, said yesterday that Taipei District Court had approved its application for restructuring.
The telecom carrier is scheduled to present the restructuring plan to a creditor’s meeting on April 27 for final approval, company president Andrew Hsu (�?�) said by telephone.
The restructuring plan calls for finalizing its plans to repay debt, reducing its outstanding shares and issuing new shares to raise an estimated NT$2.4 billion in new capital before the end of the year, Hsu said.
The telecom company has accumulated NT$1.8 billion in losses.
Last September, the phone company filed for insolvency protection and pledged to work out a restructuring plan.
FSC fines Kuo Hua
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday imposed a NT$9.6 million fine on Kuo Hua Life Insurance Co (國華人壽) for violating the Insurance Law, the commission said in a press statement.
The life insurer was punished for underestimating its capital reserve, failing to meet required hedging purposes for derivatives transactions and leaving several property development projects idle for more than two years.
The commission also reversed a prior ruling imposing a NT$10 million fine on China Development Industrial Bank (中華開發工銀) for “lack of internal controls” during its liquidation of overseas investments and an asset management subsidiary.
The commission imposed a new NT$4 million fine after the bank’s appeal to the Taipei High Administrative Court suggested that the commission should consider a less severe punishment given that the bank had an internal control mechanism in place although it was found to be negligent in some areas.
Forex reserves rise in February
Despite a flagging economy, the nation’s foreign exchange reserves continued to accumulate while its major trade rivals reported losses, the central bank said yesterday.
At the end of last month, the nation’s foreign exchange reserves amounted to US$294.19 billion, up US$1.511 billion from a month earlier, Lin Sun-yuan (林孫源), deputy director-general of the Department of Foreign Exchange, told a press briefing.
Lin attributed the increase to the monetary regulator’s management strategy.
South Korea recorded a US$2 million drop in its foreign exchange reserves, which stood at US$200.8 billion, Lin said.
Hong Kong and Singapore also reported declines of US$3.7 billion and US$7.6 billion to US$169.9 billion and US$177.5 billion respectively, Lin 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],”
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