Shares rise slightly
Shares closed little changed yesterday on a lack of fresh cues, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 4.18 points, or 0.05 percent, to 7,687.15 on turnover of NT$99.69 billion (US$3.09 billion).
The market opened 0.16 percent higher on a mild technical rebound, but pressure followed to erode earlier gains with the index drifting without direction until the end of session, dealers said.
“Judging from the reduced turnover, I suspect many foreign institutional investors retreated from the trading floor for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday [in the US],” Mega Securities (兆豐證券) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said.
Thanksgiving is on Thursday and Wall Street will be closed until Monday.
Huang said while investors remained upbeat about the market outlook, “the current valuations are mostly high. Cautious sentiment dominated the trade.”
FSC plans bourse restrictions
The government plans to restrict Chinese stock investment in strategic sectors as it seeks to keep control of the economy amid rapidly growing ties with China, a local newspaper reported yesterday.
Chinese institutional investors will be allowed to hold no more than a total of 10 percent in listed companies in the telecommunications, aviation and finance industries, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported, citing unnamed sources.
The paper also said the Financial Supervisory Commission would meet other government agencies soon to discuss what cap should be set on Chinese investments in less-vital sectors.
The report was published a week after the government signed three memorandums of understanding with Beijing to pave the way for growing cooperation in banking, insurance and securities.
The agreements, which will go into effect in January, will enable Chinese institutional investors to buy shares in Taiwan’s stock market for the first time.
The announcement of the signing was met with criticism that the government had acted too fast, without ensuring proper debate about the implications of the wide-ranging pacts.
Taiwan Financial plan okayed
Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控) yesterday said it received regulatory approval last Tuesday to raise NT$90 billion (US$2.8 billion) by issuing 9 billion common shares at a face value of NT$10 a piece.
The state-run financial service provider has not, however, finalized a timetable for publicly trading its shares on the bourse, since no fiscal budget has been allocated for next year.
Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) said earlier that Taiwan Financial’s initial public offering would take place in 2011 at the earliest.
Cathay Financial buys property
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), the nation’s largest listed financial services company, yesterday acquired an 11-story commercial building on Zhongxiao E Road that is fully rented to Cash Box KTV (錢櫃KTV). The price was NT$2.99 billion (US$92.7 million).
The company said in a press statement that the property, which sits on 282 ping (930m²) of land and has 2,295 ping floor space, is expected to yield a steady return with a fixed monthly rental.
Analysts estimated the total market worth of Cathay Financial’s 200-odd properties at NT$230 billion, with more than NT$100 billion in outstanding profit.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday gained by NT$0.083 to close at NT$32.267 against the US dollar on turnover of US$528 million.
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