Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd secured a two-year syndicated loan of US$130 billion yesterday from 11 banks, including the Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行), Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中信銀), the Export-Import Bank of ROC (輸出入銀行) and Jih Sun International Bank (日盛國際商銀), creditors of the loan said in press statements.
The Taiwanese banks had oversubscribed the loan by 30 percent on the African bank’s request for a US$100 million loan, the statements said.
The loan will be used to fund the management and corporate lending businesses in South Africa, Chinatrust said.
Meanwhile, the Changhwa-based Hwa Fong Rubber Industry Co (華豐橡膠) and its subsidiary HFR Holding Corp (華豐維京控股) secured syndicated loans of NT$800 million (US$24.8 million) and US$15 million respectively yesterday from 10 domestic banks, led by the Industrial Bank of Taiwan (IBT, 台灣工業銀行), IBT said in a press statement.
The loan will be used to fund the tire manufacturer’s operations and improve its finances, the statement said.
As a vote of confidence in Hwa Fong, the 10 banks wished to oversubscribe the loan one-fold, the statement said.
Thanks to a decline in raw rubber material since the second half of last year, Hwa Fong reported a 10-fold increase in earnings per share to NT$0.5 for the first three quarters of this year, the bank said.
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