TAIEX follows Wall Street lower
Taiwan’s TAIEX took a dive and closed below the 8,700 point mark yesterday after Wall Street posted losses for the fifth consecutive session amid lingering concerns over the debt crisis in Washington, dealers said.
Market sentiment in the high-tech sector in particular was dampened after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, reduced its forecast for growth in global foundry industry revenues and TSMC’s capital expenditure this year, they said. The weighted index fell 123.02 points, or 1.40 percent, to 8,644.18, on turnover of NT$141.74 billion (US$4.92 billion).
Dongfeng Yulon eyes success
With the first Luxgen-brand sports utility vehicle (SUV) rolling off the production line in China on Thursday, Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) said its Chinese venture, Dongfeng Yulon Corp (東風裕隆), aims to rake in annual revenue of 100 billion yuan (US$15.5 billion) in 10 years.
Dongfeng Yulon will start selling Luxgen SUVs in September, with prices between 190,000 yuan and 270,000 yuan.
Yulon said the production site in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, would initially churn out 5,000 vehicles a month. Production volumes are expected to rise over time given the company’s plans to roll out one to two new models every year in China.
Dongfeng Yulon is Yulon’s joint venture with China’s Dongfeng Motor Corp (東風汽車) set up last year with 3.4 billion yuan in capital.
Kao to lead Yuanta Securities
Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) yesterday announced plans to reshuffle leadership positions at its brokerage unit ahead of its integration with Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券), a statement said.
The conglomerate appointed Kenneth Kao (高抗勝), chairman of Yuanta Futures Co (元大期貨), to the helm of Yuanta Securities Co (元大證券), the nation’s largest securities house, the statement said.
Kao will replace Teresa Ma (馬維欣), who will retain her seat on the board of the parent and brokerage subsidiary, starting on Aug. 1, the statement said.
Housing price index rises
The housing price index in Taichung reached a new high in the second quarter of this year, driven by increased needs of first-time home buyers and buyers who wanted to shift to homes with wider floor spaces, Sinyi Realty Co (信義房屋) said yesterday.
The index for the central city in a survey conducted by Sinyi Realty was 260.12 last quarter, up 19.7 percent from a year earlier and leading all four major cities around Taiwan in such growth.
The southern city of Kaohsiung, meanwhile, posted a housing price index of 184.52 last quarter, up 16.5 percent year-on-year, the survey found.
Lee Jain-ming (李健銘), a Sinyi researcher, attributed Taichung and Kaohsiung’s growth to industrial development and brisker employment markets.
Taipei’s housing price index stood at 270.21 in the second quarter, up 14.2 percent year-on-year, and New Taipei City’s (新北市) index was 215.85, up 15.4 percent.
MediaTek in Spice Digital deal
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the nation’s biggest handset chip designer, will invest US$20 million for 10 percent of India’s Spice Digital Ltd, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
NT dollar ends lower
The New Taiwan dollar depreciated against the US dollar yesterday, down NT$0.045 to close at the day’s high of NT$28.890 as foreign institutional investors sold off shares on the local bourse, dealers said.
Turnover totaled US$889 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