TAIEX turns around losses
Share prices in Taiwan rose 2 percent yesterday, led by large-cap electronic stocks. The benchmark index closed above 7,500 points.
The TAIEX rose sharply, reversing the previous week’s losses, as leaders in Italy and Greece agreed to take decisive action to combat the eurozone’s debt crisis to prevent a financial meltdown.
The TAIEX closed up 158.36 points, or 2.15 percent, to close at 7,525.65 on turnover of NT$83.33 billion (US$2.76 billion).
A total of 3,044 stocks closed up, 1,012 were down and 372 remained unchanged.
Japan, Taiwan firms ink deals
A delegation to Japan led by Minister without Portfolio Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) has helped conclude 25 memorandums of understanding and letters of intent with Japanese organizations, the government said yesterday.
Yiin and other Ministry of Economic Affairs officials visited Kitakyushu, Fukui, Kobe and Tokyo from Nov. 6 to Saturday and held several conferences in a bid to build further commercial bridges between the two countries, the Government Information Office said in a statement yesterday.
One cooperation agreement was signed between the Taiwan Food GMP Development Association and Japan’s Itochu Corp, with the deal focused on procurement and technology exchanges. In a deal between the Taiwan Electronic Equipment Industry Association and the Oita LSI Cluster — a Japanese semiconductor association — the two committed to investment and market development cooperation and component supply partnerships.
Hitachi denies parts report
Hitachi Ltd denied a report in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News that it would buy NT$60 billion of parts in Taiwan.
“The report is not true,” Hisahiro Sakai, a Hitachi spokesman, said by telephone yesterday.
Hitachi would buy parts including flat panels from Taiwanese companies, the newspaper reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information.
Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子), the nation’s top LCD panel maker, and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s second---largest contract notebook PC maker, were among companies that would receive orders from Hitachi, according to the report.
Chung-hsin wins supply bid
Chung-Hsin Electric and Machinery Manufacturing Corp (中興電工) and Mitsubishi Electric Corp won a NT$4.29 billion contract to supply equipment to an electricity power plant at Taiwan Power Co (台電), Chung-Hsin said in Taiwan Stock Exchange statement yesterday.
CSC buys forward contracts
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s largest steelmaker, bought US$8.9 million of forward contracts yesterday, with maturity dates from Dec. 16 to Nov. 15, 2014, the company said in a statement to the stock exchange. CSC also bought 2.5 million euros (US$3.4 million) of contracts maturing from Dec. 27 to Oct. 15 next year, it said.
Powerchip seeks time on loan
Local memorychip maker Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技) is seeking an extension on debt repayments, the Hsinchu-based chipmaker said in a stock exchange statement yesterday, after Chinese--language Commercial Times reported that the company was in talks with creditor banks for another extension on its NT$70 billion syndicated bank loan, which after a one-year grace period is scheduled to expire at the end of the year.
NT dollar rises slightly
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.023 to close at NT$30.165.
Turnover totaled US$581 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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts