Share prices continue to rise
Share prices in Taiwan extended their momentum yesterday from the previous session as concerns over debt problems in the eurozone eased following the Greek parliament’s approval of a plan that opens the way for new bailout funds to banks and indebted institutions, dealers said.
Turnover failed to expand in line with the index’s gains, however, as many investors remained on the sidelines, waiting for revised second-quarter economic growth figures for the US that are scheduled to be reported later this week, they said.
The TAIEX closed up 57.03 points, or 0.8 percent, at 7,146.98, after moving between 7,099.73 and 7,154.40, on turnover of NT$101.01 billion (US$3.32 billion).
Bank to buy back shares
Ta Chong Bank Ltd (大眾銀行) plans to buy back about 40 million shares, or 1.83 percent of its issued shares, the lender said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
The bank plans to buy shares at between NT$7 and NT$12 each from today to Nov. 28, and the stock is to be transferred to employees, it said.
Traffic lights save electricity
Taiwan has changed more than 690,000 traffic lights throughout the nation in a project that could save enough electricity to power more than 60,000 homes, the Bureau of Energy said yesterday.
Under the NT$550 million project launched in 2009, traffic lights have had their traditional bulbs replaced with technology using LEDs, the bureau said.
LED lights consume only a 10th of the electricity that traditional bulbs use, meaning the project is estimated to save 247 million kilowatt hours, enough to power the homes of 67,700 families, it said.
Encouraged by the success, the government plans an even more ambitious project, which aims to retire 800,000 “energy-guzzling and environmentally unfriendly” mercury-vapor street lamps over the next five years at a total cost of NT$18 billion, the bureau said.
Taiwan buys more corn
Taiwan, the fourth-biggest buyer of US corn, agreed to purchase 303 million bushels to 413 million bushels in the next two years, according to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn.
A 22-member delegation from the Taiwan Feed Industry Group agreed to import additional Illinois grain next year and in 2013, and signed letters of intent with the Illinois Corn Growers Association and the Illinois Soybean Association during a visit on Tuesday to the Abraham Lincoln presidential library in Springfield, Illinois, Quinn said in an e-mailed statement.
The deal includes buying an additional 0.75 million metric tonnes of various feed products made from corn, according to the statement.
The delegation, which included representatives from Taiwan’s Vegetable Oil Manufacturers and Oilseed Processing Association, also signed similar letters outlining its intent to purchase as much as 118 million bushels of US soybeans.
IBM, Intel invest in chips hub
International Business Machines Corp (IBM) and Intel Corp will invest US$4.4 billion over five years to create a hub for next-generation computer chip technology in New York, the state’s Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
IBM plans to spend US$3.6 billion to develop computer chips using 22-nanometer and 14-nanometer process technology, said Michael Loughran, a company spokesman.
A nanometer is a billionth of a meter and measures the size of transistors in a chip. Lower numbers indicate more advanced technology.
Intel Corp, IBM, Globalfoundries Inc, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co will focus on transforming 300mm wafer technology into 450mm technology, which will produce twice the number of chips, according to a statement from Cuomo’s office.
NT dollar rises again
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.046 to close at NT$30.410 as the strength of currencies in Asia mostly reflected increasing optimism toward the debt situation in the eurozone, dealers said.
Turnover totaled US$973 million during yesterday’s trading session.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the