Local touch sensor supplier Cando Corp (達虹科技) said its board yesterday elected TPK Holding Co (宸鴻) president Tom Sun (孫大明) as chairman, a move that would further solidify TPK’s control over the firm.
The move came after TPK, which makes touch-screens for Apple Inc’s iPhone and iPad, announced on May 18 that it would buy 180 million shares, or about a 20 percent stake, of Cando for NT$5.58 billion (US$192.9 million) to better secure its supply of the critical component.
Cando is a touch sensor subsidiary of LCD panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電).
The Hsinchu-based company said in a stock exchange filing that its board also promoted vice president Kevin Chuang (莊鋒域) to president and chairman Yuan Chun-hsien (袁鈞賢) to chief operating officer during the management reshuffle. In addition, three TPK representatives, including chief financial officer Freddie Liu (劉詩亮), will sit on Cando’s nine-member board, the filing said.
The company said it would present the management reshuffle and a plan to change the company’s name to shareholders for approval at a meeting on Oct. 5.
Yesterday’s board meeting did not finalize the company’s plan to apply with stock exchange regulators to trade its shares either on the main board — the Taiwan Stock Exchange — or the over-the-counter bourse — GRETAI Securities Market. The company currently trades on GRETAI’s emerging stock bourse.
Because of concerns about current market conditions, the company said it would not submit the listing application in the fourth quarter as originally expected.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained