Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), the nation’s largest financial services provider, yesterday said its life insurance unit had been awarded an investment quota of US$150 million by China to directly invest in Chinese securities as a qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII).
The Taipei-based company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange that Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) had secured the investment quota from China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, allowing it to invest in yuan-denominated financial products, including A shares, corporate bonds and bank debentures.
The latest announcement made Cathay Life Insurance the fourth Taiwanese life insurer to have secured a QFII investment quota from China, after Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽) and China Life Insurance Co (中國人壽) were each awarded a US$100 million quota last month.
Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽), MassMutual Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽) and Aegon Life Insurance (Taiwan) Inc (全球人壽) have also secured QFII licenses from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, but are still waiting for an investment quota from Beijing’s foreign exchange authorities.
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