Shares slip slightly
Taiwanese shares closed little changed yesterday amid cautious sentiment after declines on Wall Street overnight, dealers said.
The TAIEX fell 5.30 points or 0.07 percent to 7,665.63 on turnover of NT$91.39 billion (US$2.83 billion).
Losers led gainers by 1,387 to 1,030 with 295 stocks unchanged.
The market opened 0.26 percent lower as investors reacted to a Wall Street retreat overnight and was choppy intraday with financial stocks down and select electronic firms up, dealers said.
Concord Securities (康和證券) analyst Allen Lin said reduced trade turnover indicated many investors preferred to stay on the sidelines.
“The market had gained four sessions in a row [before today]. Investors were afraid that corrections would follow soon,” Lin said.
Taipower sells bonds
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) sold NT$10.2 billion in bonds with terms from three years to 10 years, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement on its Web site yesterday.
Taipower auctioned off NT$1.45 billion worth of three-year bonds with a yield of 1.15 percent, NT$2.75 billion five-year bonds with a yield of 1.50 percent and NT$6 billion 10-year bonds with a yield of 2.15 percent, the ministry said.
The bonds will be guaranteed by China Development Industrial Bank (中華開發工銀), Mega International Commercial Bank Co (兆豐國際商銀) and Taipei Fubon Bank (台北富邦銀行), with KGI Securities Co (凱基證券) serving the lead underwriter.
Nan Shan workers win backing
Sixty legislators endorsed a petition by employees of Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽) — the local unit of American International Group Inc (AIG) — yesterday morning, pledging to help safeguard the interests of Nan Shan employees and clients in the sale of the company.
Nearly 1,000 Nan Shan employees presented a petition to the legislators yesterday, asking the lawmakers to supervise the transfer of the company.
A consortium led by Hong Kong-based Primus Financial Holdings Ltd said on Oct. 13 that it would acquire a 97.57 percent stake in Nan Shan from AIG. Primus Financial submitted an investment application to the Investment Commission on Thursday evening.
HK economy expands
Hong Kong’s economy expanded slightly in the third quarter as its financial services and tourism sectors recovered, the territory’s government said yesterday.
Government economists also revised upward their forecast for the entire year, predicting the Hong Kong economy will contract by 3.3 percent this year — up from the previous forecast of 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent in August.
Hong Kong’s GDP inched up 0.4 percent in the July to September period on a seasonally adjusted quarter-to-quarter basis, after the economy grew by 3.3 percent in the second quarter.
CVIC SE opens Taiwan office
The China-based Cvic Software Engineering Co (CVIC SE, 中創軟件) inaugurated an office in Taiwan on Thursday, setting a new model for information industry cooperation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Officials at the Institute for Information Industry said CVIC SE’s local office might be upgraded to a branch or subsidiary of the company in the future.
NT dollar slips
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.009 to close at NT$32.339. Turnover was US$1.12 billion.
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