■INSURANCE
Ministry mulls new tax
The Ministry of Finance is expected to promulgate a new measure to tax proceeds from investment-linked insurance products late this month or early next month to pave the way for its implementation next year, an official said yesterday. The official, who declined to be named, said the measure’s impact on policy holders would be minor. Under the measure, earnings from unit-linked insurance products would be treated as taxable income. Gains of up to NT$270,000 would be tax-exempt under the existing exemption for interest income, but amounts beyond that would be subject to taxation. In addition, proceeds from policies in which the policy holder and beneficiary were not the same person would be subject to a 10 percent gift tax on benefits of more than NT$2.2 million (US$67,900).
■ELECTRONICS
ASE may lift expenditures
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing company, may raise its capital expenditure to US$400 million next year because of demand from clients such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported, without saying where it got its information. Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密), the second-biggest chip packager and tester, will probably increase its spending to US$250 million, up from NT$4 billion-NT$5 billion this year, to meet the strong demand of upstream customers, the newspaper reported.
■COMPUTERS
Asustsek shipments growing
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) expects to ship more than 15 million laptop units next year because of demand from Microsoft Corp operating system Windows 7, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported, citing chief executive Jerry Shen (沈振來). The company aims for its notebook shipments to grow faster than the overall industry rate of 30 percent next year, Shen said on the sidelines of a Windows 7 launch event. Asustek said last month that it expected to ship about 11 million to 13 million laptop units this year, up from 5.8 million last year.
■NUCLEAR POWER
Japan makes small reactors
Japan’s major nuclear reactor manufacturers have begun developing small nuclear power systems for both developed and emerging countries, a report said yesterday. Toshiba Corp is developing an ultra-compact reactor with an output of about 10,000 kilowatts and has started procedures for approval in the US, the Nikkei business daily said. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd has separately completed the concept design for a pressurized-water reactor with a power output of about 350,000 kilowatts, the Nikkei said. Hitachi Ltd also aims to develop a boiling-water reactor with a capacity of 400,000 kilowatts to 600,000 kilowatts for use in Southeast Asia and other countries, it said.
■BANKING
Failed US banks pass 100
The number of failed regional US banks exceeded 100 on Friday, after authorities announced the collapse of seven more financial institutions around the country. A total of 106 regional banks failed in the US this year, a figure not seen since 1992. Partners Bank of Naples, Florida, which had capital of US$65.5 million, became the 100th bank shut down in the country since the beginning of the year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced.
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