Affected by plummeting stock prices last month, US$8.02 billion worth of foreign funds were transferred out of Taiwan to overseas destinations during that month, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said on Friday.
After Standard and Poor’s move to downgrade the credit rating of the US, stock prices in Taiwan experienced several roller-coaster drops last month because of heavy selling by foreign investors, at one point bringing the benchmark weighted index down to the 7,100 point mark.
According to FSC statistics, the scale of foreign capital outflow last month — even though it slowed toward the end of the month — was even bigger than in October 2008 at the height of the global financial storm. In that month alone, US$7.52 billion worth of foreign funds were wired abroad.
Franklin Templeton SinoAm First Fund manager Huang Shih-chia (黃世洽) said he does not expect roller-coaster plunges in the European and US stock markets after US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hinted that efforts will be made in the Fed to use any possible means to address the financial troubles in the US.
Stable markets in Europe and the US will also help boost stock trading in Taiwan, relaxing the pressure of further foreign capital outflow, he said.
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