TAIEX down O.51%
The TAIEX closed down 0.51 percent yesterday as weakening non-high-tech sectors eroded early gains and investors shrugged off a Wall Street rally overnight, dealers said.
The TAIEX fell 39.44 points to close at the day’s low of 7,748.01, off an early high of 7,806.25, on turnover of NT$97.92 billion (US$3.05 billion).
The market opened up 0.24 percent on follow-through buying, but market sentiment was soon dampened by concerns over the Formosa Plastics Group’s earnings and selling emerged, dealers said.
A total of 1,915 stocks closed down and 1,285 were up, with 359 remaining unchanged.
Chimei Innolux to hire 3,500
Taiwan’s top LCD maker, Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子), yesterday said it planned to hire 3,500 staff members by the end of this year to cope with business expansion plans.
“The recruitment is to meet our expansion for the production facilities in Hsinchu, Tainan and China,” the company said in a statement.
The vacancies include 3,000 technicians, 400 engineers and management staff and 100 staff to be posted overseas, it said.
A major recruitment fair has been scheduled for Sunday at Taipei 101, with another following at its Tainan plant, the statement said.
Shin Kong considers NY Life bid
Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), the owner of Taiwan’s third-largest life insurer, Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), is considering a bid for New York Life Insurance Co’s local unit, Shin Kong president Victor Hsu (許彭) said.
“We are conducting an internal study of New York Life’s Taiwan unit after we heard some assets are up for sale,” Hsu said in a telephone interview yesterday. “We haven’t made any decision yet.”
New York Life is preparing to sell its units in Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported on Monday.
PBC optimistic on slowdown
China’s central bank said the slowdown in growth in the world’s third-largest economy will likely stabilize it, helping the nation avoid a slump during the second half of the year.
The economy’s fundamentals remain “good,” the People’s Bank of China said on its Web site yesterday. China’s decreasing dependence on exports also means the European debt crisis is unlikely to have a large impact, the bank said in its report for the second quarter.
The bank was cautiously optimistic about the Chinese economy, it said.
Rambus wins Nvidia suit
Rambus Inc, a seller of technology used in computer memory, won its patent-infringement fight against Nvidia Corp over imports of computer-graphics chips.
Nvidia violated Rambus’s patent rights, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington said in a decision on its Web site on Monday. The ITC said an order should be issued to ban imports of some products containing Nvidia chips, a move that would be subject to review by US President Barack Obama.
The ITC case also named products that use Nvidia chips, including some Hewlett-Packard Co computers, motherboards made by Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) and products from Biostar Microtech International Corp. California-based Nvidia was handling the defense for them.
NT dollar up NT$0.03
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, rising NT$0.03 to close at NT$32.090.
Turnover totaled US$482 million during the trading session.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the