Caution pushes TAIEX down
Taiwanese shares closed 0.67 percent lower yesterday as investors remained cautious ahead of the release of key economic data from China, dealers said.
The TAIEX index dropped 52.02 points to 7,701.50 on turnover of NT$124.62 billion (US$3.85 billion).
Losers outnumbered gainers 1,801 to 752, while 203 stocks were unchanged.
But some small caps remained active, with a total of 37 shares surging to their daily 7.0 percent limit, against seven limit-down.
“Like in recent sessions, while investors did not want to push prices higher, bargain-hunting emerged when the market fell to certain levels,” said Mars Hsu of Grand Cathay Securities (大華證券).
He expected the market to continue hovering within a range of 7,600 to 7,800.
Powerchip to set up TFC
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation’s No. 2 PC memory chipmaker, yesterday said it planned to raise NT$20 billion (US$618 million) in forming a new flash memory chip designer to minimize the impact of volatile PC memory business.
Powerchip said it hoped to get a total of NT$8 billion in capital infusion from the government for the new company, Taiwan Flash Co (TFC), including an initial NT$4.5 billion.
That is the proposal that Powerchip submitted to the Industrial Development Bureau on Tuesday, in a move to join the central government’s efforts to revive the nation’s PC memory sector. Under the proposal, Powerchip would make flash memory chips for TFC.
Gou to represent Taipei City
Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) will act as an ambassador to promote Taipei City’s participation in World Expo 2010 Shanghai, an official said on Tuesday.
The business group is a sponsor of the Taipei Pavilion that the Taipei City Government will set up at the exhibition. The pavilion will feature the city’s ubiquitous wireless Internet access and garbage and recycling policies.
According to Huang Nan-hui (黃南輝), a consultant with the Hon Hai Education Foundation, Gou decided to provide sponsorship for the city government’s participation in the expo because the themes are consistent with Hon Hai’s corporate values that emphasize environmental protection and energy conservation.
Gou will also take part in activities to be held by the city government as a warm-up for the exhibition. They include a competition to choose the smile, logo and image that best represent Taipei, Huang said.
Jobless recovery likely: CEPD
Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) Chairman Tsai Hsun-hsiung (蔡勳雄) said yesterday that Taiwan’s economy is moving toward a “jobless recovery” because the unemployment rate is showing no signs of easing.
Addressing a business gathering in Taipei, Tsai said the jobless rate would only begin to shrink in the first quarter of next year.
He warned that the domestic labor market might experience an imbalance in coming years in that a drain of domestic managerial talent may lead to 60,000 executive positions remaining unfilled even as local talent refuses to take up to 350,000 lower-end jobs.
He said that workers aged between 15 and 25 had experienced an unemployment rate high of 14 percent, compared with an average 5.82 percent as of August.
NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar fell against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, falling NT$0.084 to close at NT$32.359. A total of US$1.14 billion changed hands in the day’s trading.
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