TAIEX slides 0.9 percent
The TAIEX closed down 0.9 percent yesterday after Wall Street slumped late last week amid concerns that China would further tighten money supply to fight inflation, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 75.4 points to 8,240.65, after moving between 8,226.71 and 8,301.35, on turnover of NT$86.97 billion.
Textile shares suffered the steepest decline, losing 4.7 percent. Pulp and paper stocks fell 3.8 percent, construction firms shed 3.7 percent, cement shares lost 2 percent and the plastics and chemical sector closed down 1.8 percent.
Land sales successful: ministry
The Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday it had sold 84 plots of idle industrial land for a total of NT$5.22 billion (US$163 million) this year.
The ministry introduced the scheme in January, aiming to sell idle industrial lots below market prices, and the results have been satisfactory so far, it said in a statement.
The 84 plots of land span 80.87 hectares, and their buyers are expected to invest NT$27.4 billion to set up factories, buildings or offices that would create 3,568 jobs, it said.
The ministry said that to date, 80 percent of the vacant lots at Changpin Industrial Park (彰濱工業區) were sold at the auctions, biddings, while the success rates for other parks were 60 percent for Douliou (斗六), 22 percent for Tainan and 21 percent for Heping (和平).
Formosa to expand in US
Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), the nation’s biggest diversified industrial conglomerate, plans to spend about US$800 million to build ethylene and propylene plants in the US to tap demand for the chemicals.
The proposed plants in Texas will be able to produce 450,000 tonnes of ethylene and 400,000 tonnes of propylene a year, Lee Chih-tsuen (李志村), a member of the company’s executive board, told reporters in Taipei County yesterday.
Construction may start in 2012, he said.
The group needs the plants for raw materials that will be made into products for the US and Latin American markets, he said.
Ethylene and propylene are raw materials for plastics and chemical fibers.
“We don’t have enough of them,” Lee said.
The company’s US unit already has an annual capacity of 1.55 million tonnes of ethylene, Lee said.
Asustek plans Pegatron sale
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) plans to apply to local regulators to sell global depositary receipts in affiliate Pegatron Corp (和碩), Asustek’s chief finance officer David Chang (張偉明) said by telephone yesterday.
The Taipei-based maker of personal computers plans to sell up to 12 percent of Pegatron’s outstanding shares, Chang said.
China, India back Russia
China and India’s foreign ministers support Russia joning the WTO next year, according to a joint statement issued after a meeting of the three countries’ ministers yesterday.
Global economic recovery is still “weak and unbalanced,” the ministers said in the statement posted on China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site.
The three countries will promote cooperation in energy and high-tech sectors and urge resumption of the six-party talks, according to the statement.
Bank of China to sell shares
Bank of China Ltd (中國銀行) said it would sell 7.6 billion H shares for HK$2.74 each, it said in a statement to Hong Kong’s stock exchange.
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