Share prices lost ground yesterday, with the TAIEX falling 21.4 points, or 0.26 percent, to close at 7,930.77.
The bourse opened at 8,006.79 and fluctuated between 7,889.93 and 8,010.98. Market turnover totaled NT$95.23 billion (US$3.03 billion). Losers outnumbered gainers 1,940 to 1,123, with 279 remaining unchanged.
Foreign investors and Chinese qualified domestic institutional investors were net sellers of NT$2.11 billion in shares.
Stocks become ‘full-delivery’
Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), the nation’s third-biggest maker of flat panels, and Mustek Systems Inc (鴻友科技), which produces scanners, digital cameras and video cameras, will become “full-delivery” stocks from today, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement on its Web site on Monday evening. This means the shares cannot be traded on margin or be sold short.
Credit card bad-loan ratio down
The nation’s 37 credit card issuers averaged a bad-loan ratio of 0.84 percent by the end of March, down 0.04 percentage points month-on-month, the Financial Supervisory Commission’s latest statistics showed yesterday.
In addition, 19 domestic cash card issuers averaged a bad-loan ratio of 2.192 percent in March, down 0.079 percentage points month-on-month, the data showed.
Meanwhile, Chinese holders of debit cards issued by China UnionPay Co (中國銀聯) will soon be allowed to withdraw cash, make cash advances or check their account balance at local automatic teller machines, the commission’s banking bureau said in a press statement.
Chinese cardholders will be able to withdraw up to NT$20,000 at a time, although withdrawals will be limited to 10,000 yuan per day per card, the statement said.
Once the commission grants regulatory approval, 18 domestic banks will be allowed to launch such services in the near future, the commission said.
Carrefour in India talks
Carrefour SA, Europe’s biggest retailer, is in talks with a potential partner in India as it taps growth in emerging markets, chief executive officer Lars Olofsson said.
Carrefour will reveal the partner’s identity in a few months, the exectutive said yesterday at the Paris-based company’s annual meeting.
Carrefour will open more hypermarkets and discount stores in China and Brazil this year. The company plans to open 22 hypermarkets and 140 hard discount stores in China this year, he said.
Bank IPO could set record
Agricultural Bank of China (中國農業銀行) yesterday filed its application with the Hong Kong stock exchange ahead of what could be the world’s largest initial public offering.
The application officially initiated the bank’s plan to launch a dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai to raise as much as US$30 billion, people familiar with the situation told Dow Jones Newswires.
If approved, the bank will be the last of China’s big four state-run lenders to be listed.
However, it has not yet filed in Shanghai, a source said.
Agricultural Bank’s IPO may exceed the US$22 billion stock offering by Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC, 中國工商銀行) in 2006, data provider Dealogic said.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.059 to close at NT$31.46.
A total of US$898 million changed hands during the trading session.
STAFF WRITER, WITH AGENCIES
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts