Politics weighs on trading
Shares ended flat yesterday amid investor uncertainty ahead of local elections tomorrow, dealers said.
The TAIEX rose 7.05 points, or 0.09 percent, to close at 7,684.67 on turnover of NT$113.91 billion (US$3.54 billion).
Thirty stocks, mostly small caps, surged to their 7 percent daily limit, while 12 went limit-down.
However, losers outnumbered gainers 1,617 to 959, while 270 were unchanged.
“Political uncertainty affected sentiment throughout the session ... Against this backdrop, investors opted to stay on the sidelines,” said Chen Yu-yu (陳育娛) of Capital Securities Corp (群益證券).
ICBC interested in Cathay
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) shares climbed yesterday after Reuters reported that Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC, 中國工商銀行) was in talks to buy a stake in the Taiwanese company.
Cathay Financial gained 3 percent to close at NT$58.80 in Taipei, after climbing as much as 3.9 percent, the most since Oct. 7. ICBC fell 1.3 percent in Shanghai.
ICBC, China’s largest bank and the biggest in the world based on market value, is interested in buying a 20 percent stake in Cathay Financial, Reuters said on Wednesday, citing people it didn’t identify.
Talks are at an early stage, the news agency reported. Cathay said in a statement yesterday that the information in media reports wasn’t released by the company.
FSC lists Dubai exposure
The local financial sector’s exposure to Dubai World, which sought to delay its US$59 billion debt payments, and Dubai-bound equities investments totaled NT$34.7 billion (US$1.08 billion), including NT$21 billion in loans, the Financial Supervisory Commission’s (FSC) latest statistics showed.
Lin Tung-liang (林棟樑), deputy director of the commission’s Banking Bureau, said 35.8 percent of the NT$21 billion in outstanding loans — including NT$8 billion granted to Dubai World alone — had been collateralized.
About 21 domestic banks, including nine state-run banks, have reported their exposure, he said.
FSC Chairman Sean Chen (陳冲) had told the legislature on Wednesday that the local banking sector’s non-performing loan ratio wouldn’t rise by another 0.5 percentage points even if the total loan exposure turns sour.
“The risk exposure will be containable,” Chen said.
CPT may reduce shares
Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (CPT, 中華映管), the nation’s third-largest flat-panel maker, said in a stock filing yesterday it wouldn’t rule out reducing its outstanding shares to improve its net value per share.
The Taoyuan-based company said its net value per share has dropped recently, after it issued new shares below their par value of NT$10.
CPT’s board on Oct. 21 approved a plan to issue as many as 6 billion shares in a private placement.
NT dollar inches up
The New Taiwan dollar was little changed, after rising to the highest level in two weeks, on speculation the central bank will curb gains to support exports.
The NT dollar traded at NT$32.150 versus the greenback as of 4pm, up NT$0.02 from the previous day, Taipei Forex Inc said. It earlier touched NT$32.093, the strongest level since Nov. 19.
“The central bank doesn’t want to see the Taiwan dollar level below NT$32.00,” said Janet Lin, a currency trader at Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀). “Before the year-end, I think the rate will be stable unless the stock market strengthens.”
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