TAIEX drops on profit-taking
The TAIEX closed 0.96 percent lower yesterday as three major groups of investors took profits and sold shares.
The index closed 84.61 points lower to finish at 8,718.12 after moving between 8,834.07 and 8,716.70 on turnover of NT$106.791 billion (US$3.68 billion).
A total of 2,841 stocks closed down, 1,439 finished up and 473 remained unchanged.
Among the three major institutional groups, foreign and Chinese investors sold a net of NT$44.55 billion, dealers sold NT$8.68 billion and investment trust companies sold NT$3 billion in shares.
The plastics and chemicals sector saw the heaviest in net sales, with shares falling 1.3 percent, while the construction sector posted the biggest gains of the day, inching 0.1 percent higher.
AUO, Sharp sign agreement
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the nation’s No. 2 LCD panel maker, said yesterday it has inked a cross-licensing agreement with Japanese Sharp Corp, ending all pending patent infringement lawsuits against each other.
The companies have agreed to license certain patents to each other on the basis of mutual respect for their intellectual property rights, according to a company statement.
The cross license will allow the companies to innovate using the other company’s specified patented technologies for the further advancement of TFT-LCD technologies.
Huang to chair Jih Sun
The board of Jih Sun Financial Holding Co (日盛金控) yesterday approved the appointment of veteran banker Alex Huang (黃錦瑭) to its chairmanship, effective immediately, the company said in a stock exchange filing.
Huang, who has a long string of credentials in the banking sector as well as securities -brokerage, succeeded Eric Yang (楊智光) as chairman, the statement said. Yang will retain his position as a board director, said the company, which has fought hard to defuse rumors of potential acquisition by larger peers.
Wan Hai ratings rise
Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評), the local arm of Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service (S&P), yesterday raised its long-term and short-term corporate credit ratings on Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運) to “twA/twA-1” from “twA-/twA-2,” the agency said in a statement.
Taiwan Ratings also raised its issue rating on Wan Hai’s unsecured corporate bonds to “twA-” from “twBBB+,” adding that the “outlook on the long-term rating is stable.”
HSBC changes remuneration
HSBC plans a shake-up of its controversial remuneration policy to prevent a repeat of the stinging investor protests on executive pay that marred its annual investor meeting last year.
Europe’s largest bank has invited shareholders to vote on proposals that would limit the maximum bonus and long-term incentive plan share payouts to 10 times basic salary, from 12 times.
The plan also makes it harder for employees to cash in quickly on rewards, prolonging the vesting period for share awards from three to five years and crucially making staff hold on to these shares until they retire or leave the bank.
“We believe these proposals will lead the way on better alignment of employee incentivization with strategy and long-term sustainable value creation for shareholders,” HSBC said in a statement yesterday.
NT dollar falls by NT$0.009
The New Taiwan dollar fell against the US dollar yesterday, down NT$0.009 to close at NT$29.050. Turnover totaled US$808 million during the trading session.
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