Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) chairman Wang Yao-shing (王耀興) said in Shanghai yesterday that he expects the bank’s Shanghai branch to make a profit next year, riding the wave of China’s fast-growing economy.
In an inauguration ceremony for the Shanghai branch, Wang said that once it starts making a profit, the bank is expected to open more branches in other Chinese cities, starting from 2012, to provide a wider range of financial services to Taiwanese companies operating in China.
Prior to opening the branch, the bank had operated a representative office in Shanghai for eight years, which has attracted a great number of Taiwanese investors in recent years.
Meanwhile, the bank is planning to seek further business cooperation with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC, 中國工商銀行), one of the leading lenders in China.
Wang said that as far back as Land Bank’s establishment of its Shanghai representative office, the Taiwanese bank and ICBC have built up a good relationship in financial service cooperation.
In Shanghai alone, ICBC has 501 outlets and employs 13,000 people, with a base of 350,000 corporate customers and 15 million retail clients, ICBC Shanghai branch president Shen Liqiang (沈立強) said.
Shen said he believes Land Bank and ICBC will build a good model on business cooperation for the financial sectors on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
He also said ICBC is planning to set up a foothold in Taiwan and will send a delegation to survey the country’s financial market in April or May.
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