New Cathay presidents named
Cathay Financial Holdings Co (國泰金控) named Lee Chang-ken (李長庚) as president, replacing Chen Tsu-pei (陳祖培), who resigned, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Lee will also replace Chen as president of its unit Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行), the holding company said in a separate statement. The changes need the approval of the Financial Supervisory Commission, the statement said.
Cathay United Bank’s board yesterday approved plans to issue up to NT$20 billion (US$690 million) of debentures to finance medium and long-term funding needs and improve its capital adequacy, the lender said in an exchange statement.
Meanwhile, Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) named Hsiung Ming-ho (熊明河) as president, replacing Chang Fa-te (張發得), who resigned, Cathay Financial said in a separate statement to the stock exchange.
Lin Chao-ting (林昭廷), executive vice president at the insurer, will be the acting spokesman, replacing Chang, the statement said.
New feed-in fees set
The government is setting this year’s feed-in tariffs at a minimum NT$7.33 a kilowatt-hour for solar power and NT$2.61 for electricity generated by wind, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement yesterday.
Feed-in tariffs are the prices that state-run utility Taiwan Power Co (台電) pays generators. The prices for last year were NT$11.12 per kilowatt-hour for photovoltaic solar panels and NT$2.38 for wind farms, the ministry’s Bureau of Energy announced in December 2009.
The government has set minimum wholesale prices for electricity generated by solar panels and wind turbines at higher levels than that from fossil fuels to spur production of renewable energy after the legislature approved the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條例) in June 2009.
Pension fund makes billions
The Public Service Pension Fund had a good year last year, making NT$15.9 billion mainly out of stock market investments, the fund’s management board said on Thursday.
The board said it expects the stock market to continue to offer good returns this year — better than the bonds market.
In its annual report on the fund, the board said that as of the end of last year, a total of 640,000 public servants and their employer — the government — had contributed NT$625.9 billion to the fund.
From that total, the fund made a profit of NT$94.2 billion, giving it a revenue of NT$720 billion. After deducting expenditure of NT$230.2 billion, the fund had a net worth of NT$489.8 billion.
Nokia’s global share down
Nokia Oyj lost 5.8 percentage points of the global share of the mobile handset market while holding on to top spot with 31 percent in the fourth quarter, researcher Strategy Analytics said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The total market climbed 16.3 percent to 1.36 billion units for the period, it said.
Samsung Electronics Co maintained its second spot with 20.2 percent, LG Electronics Inc held third place and Research in Motion Ltd was fourth, the researcher said. LG’s share dropped to 7.7 percent from 9.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, it said. Apple Inc climbed to fifth with a 4.1 percent share, from 2.5 percent a year earlier, according to the statement.
On Thursday, Nokia posted a net profit of 745 million euros (US$1.02 billion) in the period from October to last month, down from 948 million euros a year earlier, on sales that were up 6 percent at 12.65 billion euros.
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
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six