Savills (Taiwan) Ltd (第一太平戴維斯) yesterday formed a property management arm with initial working capital of NT$10 million (US$315,000) to tap into the nation’s management services market for luxury homes and upscale commercial properties, mostly in Taipei and Taichung.
“We will aim at [providing management services to] luxury homes worth more than NT$1 million per ping [3.2m²], or commercial properties with a minimum floor space of 5,000 ping each,” Savills Taiwan general manager Cynthia Chu (朱幸兒), who also doubles as the 10-member management arm’s general manager, told a media briefing yesterday.
The newly launched subsidiary has won contracts to manage the 14-story Buffet Enterprise Center in downtown Taipei, built by Fabulous Group (將捷集團), and chemical manufacturer Loyal Group’s (見龍集團) 12-story headquarter building in Neihu, she said, adding that the company charges between NT$110 and NT$280 per ping monthly for property management services.
By leveraging the group’s property management expertise in China, Chu yesterday vowed to expand the subsidiary’s workforce to 40 by the end of this year to manage a total of 20 properties here.
Savills China provides management services in areas including security, housekeeping, chauffeur, catering and entertainment to properties totaling 11.82 million square meters, including the seven-star Beijing-based landmark Pangu Plaza (盤谷大觀), which boasts a management service charge of about 50 yuan (US$7.32) per square meter.
Claiming to be an industry leader in property management, the realtor’s chief executive officer in the greater China region, Randall Hall, said yesterday he was confident in the local market’s potential.
“The new initiatives in [financial] MOU [memorandum of understanding] and ECFA [economic cooperation framework agreement] will present both Taiwan and China unlimited business opportunities,” he told a media briefing yesterday.
He earmarked a three-year goal for the local property management arm to take up a more than 30 percent share of Savills Taiwan’s annual revenues.
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