Electronics nudge TAIEX up
Share prices in Taiwan posted gains yesterday on the back of a technical rebound among electronics stocks as investors left behind concerns, at least for the moment, that the US might not resolve its debt crisis, dealers said.
The TAIEX index rose 110.73 points, or 1.28 percent, to close at the day’s high of 8,794.24, off a low of 8,689.15, on turnover of NT$111.01 billion (US$3.85 billion).
The machinery and electronics sector scored the highest gains, finishing up 1.8 percent, while cement stocks fell 2.2 percent on profit-taking from a recent strong showing.
Banks sign cooperation deal
Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行), the banking unit of the state-run Hua Nan Financial Holding Co (華南金控), yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding with China’s Bank of Communications (交通銀行) for cooperation in risk control, trade financing, corporate banking, personnel exchange and other areas, the local lender said.
The agreement reflected the local lender’s ongoing attempt to increase its presence in China after setting up a branch in Shenzhen, Hua Nan Bank said.
With 2,643 offices in 220 Chinese cities, Bank of Communications is expected to help facilitate the expansion, the local lender said.
CEO’s rumored move ‘normal’
The rumored move of former Acer Inc (宏碁) CEO Gianfranco Lanci to Samsung Electronics Co has made headlines, but company founder Stan Shih (施振榮) was not surprised, saying yesterday that the flow of high-tech executives should be seen as normal.
“The flow of talent is a quite normal phenomenon in the industry because people will by nature keep seeking better jobs,” Shih said.
According to local media reports, Samsung has agreed to pay all legal expenses should Acer sue Lanci for joining the South Korean company in direct violation of their one-year non-competition agreement.
Acer said on Monday that it would “keep an eye on the issue and will take necessary measures to protect the company’s interests.”
Yellow pages go cross-strait
Companies operating yellow-page businesses across the Taiwan Strait signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Monday to start a yellow-page Web site that could provide 600,000 data entries when launched.
Chunghwa Yellow Pages Co (中華國際黃頁), Shanghai Bell Atlantic Yellow Pages Information Co (大西洋貝爾黃頁廣告), Hong-Kong based Pacific Century Cyber Works Ltd (電訊盈科) and Directly Macau Ltd (澳門利達通黃頁) signed the MOU and said they planned to launch a joint yellow-page Web site — yptrade.com — in the fourth quarter of this year.
Joy Hsu (徐祖詒), managing director of Chunghwa Yellow Pages, predicted that the Web site will have more than 1 million entries by next year and generate NT$4 billion (US$138.6 million) in business deals.
NT dollar rises again
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US currency yesterday, adding NT$0.03 to close at NT$28.829 as Asian currencies regained steam because of the agreement stalemate between the Obama Administration and the US Congress to raise that country’s debt ceiling, dealers said.
However, the intervention of the local central bank in late trade slowed down the pace of the appreciation of the NT dollar in a bid to protect Taiwan’s global competitiveness, they said.
Turnover totaled US$687 million during the trading session, compared with US$610
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
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