The Ministry of Finance has reached a consensus with Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) to divide 11 seats on the board of Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓公司), which owns the Taipei 101 building, between them.
The government may keep six seats after next Friday’s board meeting, in line with the 44 percent stake it controls in the company, a high-ranking ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
Ting Hsin, which owns Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品) in Taiwan and the instant-noodle brand Master Kong (康師傅) in China, may gain five seats after increasing its shares in TFCC to 37 percent, the official said.
The packaged food maker recently gained another 5.25 percent of shares from Walsin Lihwa Co (華新麗華), a leading manufacturer of copper wire, cable and specialty steel in Taiwan and the region.
There are 13 seats on the board. Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) and Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) each have one seat and will retain them, the official said.
Under the deal, the government will appoint TFCC’s chairperson and president while Ting Hsin will name the vice president, the official said. He refused to reveal whom the government favors for those posts, saying there may be a “last-minute surprise” before the board election.
However, acting chairman and president Harace Lin (林鴻明) may stay in his management post, the official said.
Meanwhile, the ministry will soon announce details of a long-term plan to improve the nation’s finances, the official 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