TAIEX up on tax proposal
A proposal to exclude certain foreign investors and retail investors from a capital gains tax on stock gains planned by the government helped Taiwanese shares edge higher yesterday, breaking a three-session losing streak.
The benchmark TAIEX closed 66.44 points, or 0.87 percent, higher at 7,706.26 on turnover of NT$77.51 billion (US$2.62 billion).
Market sentiment turned slightly upbeat after a tax reform meeting held by the Ministry of Finance a day earlier reached consensus that certain foreign institutional investors and local retail investors should be exempt from any capital gains tax on stock investments the government decides to impose.
Wowprime plans China hot-pot
Wowprime Corp (王品), which owns 11 restaurant brands in Taiwan and China, yesterday said its board has approved the plan to spend US$5 million on operating a hot-pot restaurant in China.
The new restaurant will target price-sensitive consumers in China, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
In a separate filing, Womwprime said the board gave the go-ahead to spend an additional US$8.16 million on its steak house Tasty (西堤) in Shanghai.
The board also approved a proposal to distribute a cash dividend of NT$10.24 per share.
Townships ink peach pact
A township in Taoyuan County signed a memorandum of understanding for agricultural cooperation yesterday with a township in Shanghai to help promote bilateral exchanges.
Taoyuan county commissioner Wu Chih-yang (吳志揚), who arrived in Shanghai with a 14-member delegation a day earlier to take part in the opening of the Shanghai Peach Blossom Festival, witnessed the inking of the agreement with Jiang Liang (姜梁), governor of the Pudong New Area, to promote the peaches that are specialties of both Fusing and Datuan townships.
Garuda hires Taiwanese
Indonesia’s flagship airline, PT Garuda Indonesia, began interviewing flight attendants in Taiwan yesterday in preparation for a resumption of flights to Taiwan — the ability to speak Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) was one of the main skills required.
About 60 percent of passengers who fly between Jakarta and Taipei are Taiwanese, which makes fluency a basic requirement, said Garuda Indonesia Taiwan general manager Joseph Tendean. Tendean said the airline is recruiting flight attendants in Taiwan for the first time instead of sticking with Indonesian personnel because of the especially friendly attitude of Taiwanese cabin crew members he had encountered on other airlines.
Hoping to recruit 20 flight attendants in Taiwan, Garuda received about 900 applications, of whom 200 people made the cut for yesterday’s first round of tests.
Synnex revenue slips 8%
Local electronics retailer Synnex Corp (聯強國際) yesterday said revenue slid 8 percent to NT$26.38 billion (US$895 million) last month from a year ago, with communications sales dropping fastest.
Sales of communications products such as mobile phones decreased 29 percent to NT$3.32 billion, from NT$4.71 billion, according to a company statement.
That brought the company’s first-quarter revenue to NT$72.6 billion, down 2.2 percent from NT$74.2 billion in the same period last year.
NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar dropped NT$0.043 against the US dollar yesterday, to finish at NT$29.562. Turnover totaled US$542 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],”
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