TWSE to hold fair for firms
More than 90 Taiwan-based enterprises will be showcased at an exhibition of listed companies held by Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TWSE) next month to celebrate the institution’s 50th anniversary, a TWSE official said on Sunday.
TWSE senior vice president Michael Lin (林火燈) said the companies would showcase their businesses in four different pavilions for domestic listed companies, foreign companies, exchange-traded funds and information providers.
The exhibition, which is aimed at helping the firms improve investor relations and provide the public with a chance to learn more about them, will host a series of financial symposiums and investment workshops during the two-day event, Lin said.
The show, which will be free of charge, will take place on Nov. 26 and Nov. 27 at the Taipei World Trade Center, Show Hall 2.
Export orders rising: MOEA
Last month’s export orders will likely be higher than in August, when they grew at the lowest rate in 22 months, thanks to stronger demand for PCs and smartphones in the US and Europe, a Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) official said on Sunday.
Huang Ji-shih (黃吉實), director-general of the statistics department, said last month’s export orders would exceed US$37 billion, as major exporters to Europe and North America — Acer Inc (宏碁) and HTC Corp (宏達電) — have begun to report recovering sales since last month.
Acer saw its inventories fall considerably last month, while HTC has continued to put new models on the market, he added.
Tainergy inks deal for wafers
GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd (保力協鑫新能源), China’s largest polysilicon producer and one of the world’s leading wafer suppliers, has agreed to supply 1 gigawatt of solar wafers to Tainergy Tech Co (太極能源科技) with the next five years, GCL-Poly said in a statement on its Web site yesterday.
Tainergy Tech is a subsidiary of Kenmec Mechanical Engineering Co (廣運機械), which produces flat panel manufacturing equipment.
Japanese eye local investment
Four Japanese companies have voiced their intentions to establish facilities in the Central Taiwan Science Park, the park’s director-general Yang Wen-ke (楊文科) said on Sunday.
The park has been eager to attract Japanese high-tech firms and it has targeted optoelectronic, semiconductor and precision machinery makers, Yang said, adding that park deputy director-general Chen Ming-huang (陳銘煌) led a group to Japan in late August to visit potential investors.
Yang said the four companies have said they intend to invest an estimated NT$12 billion (US$394 million) to establish factories in the park and that they would soon draft investment proposals.
He added that if the park can attract these four and other similar companies, it would help integrate the park’s industrial supply chain.
Supertanker price sets new low
A supertanker was hired at the cheapest price so far this year for a shipment of crude oil to Taiwan, freight derivatives brokerage Marex Spectron said.
A very large crude carrier, or VLCC, was hired at 39.75 industry-standard Worldscale points to ship a 265,000 tonne cargo to Taiwan, Kevin Sy, a Singapore-based broker at Marex, said yesterday by e-mail. That equates to a loss of about US$7,000 a day, Sy said.
Netflix decides against split
Netflix Inc is abandoning its widely panned decision to separate its DVD-by-mail and Internet streaming services because it would make them more difficult to use.
Subscribers will be able to use both services under one account and one password, CEO Reed Hastings said yesterday in a blog post.
“It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs,” Hastings said in the blog post.
Investors saw the reversal as an Oscar-worthy move, sending the stock up US$11.24, or 9.6 percent, to US$128.45 in pre-market trading.
Less than a month ago, the Netflix said it would split the DVD rental business off on a new Web site, to be called Qwikster.
In July, the company said that customers who want streaming movies and DVDs would have to pay for them separately. The “Qwikster” announcement was a follow-up to that change.
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