TAIEX returns to 2008 levels
The TAIEX hit its highest level in more than 29 months yesterday on expectations that the next round of high-level talks between Taiwan and China would help accelerate commercial activity between the two countries, dealers said.
The TAIEX rose 147.63 points, or 1.76 percent, to close at the day’s high of 8,520.11, its highest finish since closing at 8,587.96 on June 9, 2008, on turnover of NT$149.90 billion (US$4.92 billion).
The market opened up 0.69 percent as investors shrugged off an overnight fall on Wall Street, and buying then intensified, focusing on financial firms and property developers, which are expected to benefit from booming business ties with China, dealers said.
A total of 2,802 stocks closed up and 1,406 finished down, with 363 remaining unchanged.
CPC Corp to raise LPG price
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) increased domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) prices for this month to reflect higher international costs, the company said in a statement on its Web site yesterday.
Prices were raised by NT$2 per kilogram, the Taipei-based company said. The refiner said it would keep natural gas prices unchanged. LPG, a by-product of oil refining, crude oil and gas production, is used for cooking, heating and as motor fuel. The wholesale price of the fuel for households will climb to NT$28.46 per kilogram from NT$26.46, effective tomorrow, the company said.
FPG boss visits CNOOC sites
Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) chairman William Wong (王文淵) visited China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC, 中海油) sites in China’s Fujian and Guangdong provinces from Monday through yesterday, the Taipei-based company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
The two companies discussed possible cooperation, FPG said.
The group is considering investing in Fujian Province and partnerships with Chinese companies are possible, said Frank Fu (傅陳卿), spokesman for the Taipei-based company. The proposal is still preliminary, Fu said.
Airtac to launch primary listing
Airtac International Group (亞德客國際集團), a China-based pneumatic product maker, is scheduled to launch its primary listing on the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Dec. 13, underwriter Yuanta Securities Corp (元大證券) said yesterday.
Airtac will issue 17.05 million shares for the listing at a price of between NT$82 and NT$92, with a public subscription starting yesterday that will run through tomorrow, the underwriter said.
The listing price will be set on Dec. 6, the underwriter said.
Airtac, which was set up in 1988 and is registered in the Cayman Islands, runs production facilities in China. It operates 31 branches and 23 representative offices throughout China and is working with more than 500 distributors, serving more than 40,000 customers there, Yunata Securities said.
Android to lead phone market
Google Inc’s Android operating system is expected to take the biggest share of the smartphone market next year, local researchers said on Tuesday.
Shipments of smartphones running the Android system, which are forecast to rank second place this year with 58.45 million units sold, will top the market next year with an estimated 29.7 percent share, according to an e-mail statement from Luke Lin (林俊吉), an analyst and project manager of Digitimes Research.
Nokia’s Symbian will slide to second place with a 28 percent market share, followed by Apple Inc’s iOS with 16.7 percent, RIM’s BlackBerry with 14 percent and Microsoft’s Windows with 5.1 percent, the researcher said.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained