China meeting boosts shares
Taiwanese shares closed up 0.31 percent yesterday amid optimism over better ties with China ahead of high-level talks in Taichung next week with a senior Chinese envoy, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 24.06 points to 7,819.13 on turnover of NT$127.44 billion (US$3.95 billion).
The weighted index opened flat, with buying focused on companies that have close business ties with China, before pressure set in with the index breaching 7,800 points, dealers said.
“Investors have embraced high hopes that the upcoming negotiations will deliver measures to boost the domestic economy,” Concord Securities (康和證券) analyst Allen Lin said. “I expect such an upbeat mood will lend more support to the bourse in the rest of the week.”
Firms with large property assets outperformed the broader market on expectations that the government will relax restrictions on Chinese investment in local real estate, dealers said.
However, with many institutional investors away before the Christmas holidays, large-cap electronic stocks closed mixed.
“It’s hard for the market to pull off a breakthrough with the current moderate turnover,” Lin said.
Ting Hsin steals the show
Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團), a food conglomerate that owns Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品) and Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding Corp (康師傅控股), will be sponsoring the New Year’s fireworks display at Taipei 101.
Ting Hsin, the skyscraper’s second-largest shareholder, outbid more than 10 foreign and domestic companies that were interested in the deal, Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓公司), which owns the skyscraper, said yesterday in a press statement.
The conglomerate, which reportedly paid more than NT$30 million (US$930,000), will be able to display brand names on the four sides of the building.
The TFCC estimates that the fireworks show offers global exposure worth more than NT$100 million.
Sony Corp was the first company to sponsor the event in 2006 and 2007, followed by the Tourism Bureau for last year and last January.
Credit card priorities named
Taiwanese consumers rank dining and entertainment as top spending priorities for the coming six months, a MasterCard Survey released yesterday said.
Sixty-nine percent of respondents said that dining and entertainment would be their spending priorities, followed by consumer electronic products at 54 percent and fashion and accessories at 47 percent.
Forty percent of Taiwanese consumers, down from 62 percent in July, said they planned to cut spending.
Waterland may buy MetLife
Waterland Financial Holdings (國票金控) is in talks to buy MetLife Inc’s (大都會人壽) Taiwan life insurance unit, the Taipei-based company said in an exchange filing yesterday.
“The board has authorized the chairman to engage talks on the deal,” according to the statement.
It declined to comment on the price, citing confidentiality.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported on Friday that Waterland may bid as much as US$100 million for the insurer.
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday weakened by NT$0.032 to close at NT$32.310 against the US dollar on turnover of US$627 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