After a turn of events that left outsiders in the dark as to why its boardroom dispute came to an end on Wednesday, Hey Song Corp (黑松) elected a new board of directors yesterday, with Chang Pin-tang (張斌堂) garnering the highest number of votes.
Breeze Center (微風廣場) secured two seats — up from originally one seat — on the 11-member board. Breeze Center owner Paul Liao (廖偉志) dismissed media reports that he intended to acquire the Taipei-based beverage maker in the future.
Hey Song set aside all the disputes during yesterday’s meeting, shelving four motions on the agenda — including one on removing Liao and company chairman Chang Tao-hung (張道宏) from the board.
However, board director Chang Tao-jung (張道榕) — who had opposed the participation of Breeze Center — lost his seat yesterday. He declined to comment when asked about Breeze Center securing two board seats.
Yeh Shu-ling (葉淑玲), Chang Tao-jung’s wife and one of the three original supervisors, was also voted out. The couple, along with eight other board directors and two other supervisors, had accused the company of falsifying financial reports last month.
Chang Pin-tang, who led the board election, is Chang Tao-hung’s nephew and is expected to take over as chairman in the next term. Chang Tao-hung secured the second-highest number of votes.
Liao garnered the third-highest vote, followed by Liao Chen-han (廖鎮漢), who is also a board member of Breeze Center. The remaining seats went to seven other members of the Chang family.
Hey Song said the company would hold its annual shareholders’ meeting on June 15, but didn’t say whether it would call a board meeting on the same day to elect a new chairman.
Shares of Hey Song rose more than 3 percent in early trading yesterday and hit the 7 percent daily limit at NT$23.40 after the list of new board directors was announced, stock exchange data showed.
The stock closed at NT$23 yesterday, up 4.55 percent from the previous day, after having dropped by 12.9 percent over the past month.
Exchange data showed that the company’s share price traded between NT$15 and NT$19 in the second half of last year, and rose after the Lunar New Year, when Breeze Center began buying large quantities of the beverage maker’s shares.
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
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