Wall Street drags TAIEX down
Taiwanese share prices closed down 1.77 percent yesterday after a Wall Street plunge overnight amid economic recovery concerns, dealers said.
The TAIEX index fell 133.41 points to 7,411.88 on turnover of NT$116.04 billion (US$3.59 billion). Losers led gainers 1,905 to 550 with 190 stocks unchanged.
The market opened lower following Wall Street’s dive, which came after the US reported an unexpected jump in weekly initial jobless claims, dealers said.
Despite sporadic bargain hunting, the market failed to overcome the selling, with the high-tech sector in focus, they said.
“Judging from the selling pattern, I suspect the pressure largely came from foreign institutional investors,” Mega Securities Co (兆豐證券) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said.
Far Eastern sells share stake
Far Eastern Department Stores Ltd (遠東百貨), Taiwan’s biggest listed department store, sold 8.8 million Asia Cement Corp (亞洲水泥) shares for NT$311 million (US$9.6 million), the Taipei-based retailer said in an exchange filing yesterday.
Far Eastern made a gain of NT$154.5 million from the share sale, according to the statement.
Clevo inks NT$3.6bn loan deal
Clevo Computer Co (藍天電腦), one of the nation’s smaller computer makers, yesterday signed a NT$3.6 billion (US$111 million) syndicated loan agreement with six banks led by Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀), the company said in a stock exchange filing.
The five-year loan’s lenders have over-subscribed by NT$600 million, or 20 percent, to the company’s originally planned NT$3 billion loan.
Clevo said it would use the loan to fund its notebook unit’s business operations, help expand its computer and electronics retail outlets in China, and repay its short-term bank loans. The company runs 16 Buynow (百腦匯) computer and electronics chain stores in China.
Other banks in the syndicate are the Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行), Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託商銀), Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行) and Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀).
Nan Ya sells five-year bonds
Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), the world’s largest processor of plastics for pipes and imitation leather, sold NT$4.8 billion of five-year bonds, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. The debt will pay an annual interest of 1.49 percent, the company said.
China tops US in S Africa
China overtook the US as South Africa’s biggest export destination in the first half of this year, reinforcing the Asian country’s push to build trade links with Africa.
South African trade and industry department data also showed that China replaced Germany as its largest country trade partner. The EU remains, by far, South Africa’s largest regional trading partner for both imports and exports.
Data for South Africa — Africa’s biggest economy — showed exports to China stood at 27.6 billion rand (US$3.56 billion) for the year to June, against 35.8 billion rand for the whole of last year.
Putin gets tough with Renault
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday called on the Renault-Nissan alliance to help ailing Russian carmaker Avtovaz, in which it has a stake, or face new talks on ownership structure, Russian news agencies reported.
“Either they will further participate in the financing of the enterprise or we will have to be discussing with them the proportion of shares,” Putin was quoted as saying at a government meeting.
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