TAIEX up half a percent
The TAIEX closed up 0.51 percent yesterday on follow-through buying as investors awash in liquidity continued to pick up select large cap stocks, dealers said.
The index rose 41.30 points to close at the day’s high of 8,132.60, off a low of 8,081.79, on turnover of NT$139.81 billion (US$4.41 billion).
The index opened 0.38 percent higher after gains on Wall Street overnight, and the upward momentum was sustained on continued interest in some market heavyweights, such as smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) and integrated circuit designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科), dealers said.
A total of 2,397 stocks closed higher, 1,447 finished lower, and 355 remained unchanged.
Basel III will test banks: Chen
Vice Premier Sean Chen (陳) said yesterday that new banking regulations, known as Basel III, represent a new challenge for the local banking sector.
Chen said that although the average Bank for International Settlements (BIS) ratio, or capital adequacy ratio, of the local banking sector currently stands at 12 percent — well above the required 8 percent under the Basel agreement — some banks are still facing pressure to raise their capital to boost the ratio.
However, Chen did not elaborate on which banks will have to make quick adjustments to raise capital. He said banks should make rights issues to boost their common shares to lift tier-one capital ratios, a move that has become a trend in the international banking sector.
Presale buyers to get iPhone 4
The nation’s big three telecom operators, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信), yesterday said they have informed presale subscribers of Apple Inc’s iPhone 4 that they will get the handset on Friday.
A total of 215,000 users of the three telecom carriers have signed up for the purchase, they said.
The companies, however, said they have not yet set a date for the official launch to non-presale customers.
China lifts tax for local airlines
China will waive business and income taxes on cross-strait flights imposed on Taiwanese airlines, the Chinese Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation announced in a joint statement yesterday on the ministry’s Web site. The waiver will begin retroactively from June 25 of last year, the statement said.
EVA eyes Brussels flights
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) might launch flights to Brussels, the French-language newspaper Les Echos reported on Monday.
Citing EVA Airways president James Jeng (鄭光遠), Les Echos said that if the carrier decides to add new routes to Europe, Brussels will be one of the possible destinations.
In the report, Hawk Chang (張志光), the general manager of EVA Airways’ branch in Belgium, said the carrier is paying considerable attention to Brussels as a possible destination as it assesses the feasibility of launching new flights to Europe.
Belgium’s authorities have expressed a lot of interest in EVA Airways’ possibly adding Brussels to its European network, he said.
EVA Airways was not immediately available for comment on the report.
NT up against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, up NT$0.035 to close at NT$31.815.
Turnover totaled US$636 million during the trading session.
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