The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE, 台灣證交所) yesterday launched a “Taiwan Top 99 Employers” index to encourage corporate social responsibility through the employment of more people.
The main criteria for selecting the 99 companies include profit per employee and turnover rate, according to the stock exchange. Those companies with turnover rates of 1 percent or lower will not be selected, the exchange said.
As for profit-making ability, the exchange said, this will be calculated on the basis of a company’s average net profits over the past five years, divided by the number of employees in the last year of that period.
The index, which is compiled by the stock exchange and Research Affiliates LLC (銳聯資產管理), is composed of the 18 highest profit-making firms in the banking and insurance sector, the 48 top-earning electronics and technology firms and the 33 most profitable companies in the traditional industries.
Currently, Cathay Financial Holdings Co (國泰金控), Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) and Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) are the leaders in these three sectors.
In the Taiwan Top 99 Employers index, Cathay Financial has the biggest weighting of 8.31 percent, because the company emplys about 43,000 people in Taiwan.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest electronics parts maker, only ranks as the 22nd-largest in weighting because the company employs just 5,927 people in Taiwan. The company has a total workforce of about 610,000 worldwide.
The exchange said the list would be an indicator of the companies’ social responsibility, which will be mirrored in their stock prices as well as in public opinion.
Separately, Ta Yang Group Holdings Ltd (大洋集團控股), a China-based manufacturer of silicon rubber devices, is seeking regulatory approval to issue Taiwan depositary receipts (TDRs) on the main board, the TWSE said yesterday.
According to the company’s prospectus, Ta Yang, which runs production facilities mainly in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, is planning to issue 40 million TDRs, each of which would represent three common shares of the company, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Ta Yang said it hopes to raise NT$480 million (US$16.39 million) from the TDR sale and plans to use most of the funds to build a new self-owned plant in China’s Guangxi Province to boost its competitiveness.
The company’s silicon rubber devices are used in consumer electronics such as keypads for computers and notebooks, and mobile phone handsets, as well as in automotive peripheral products.
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],”
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
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