Shares slip on euro concerns
The TAIEX took a hit yesterday as selling focused on market heavyweights, forcing the benchmark index down below the 7,200-point mark amid escalating fears that debt-ridden Greece would leave the eurozone, dealers said.
Although state-run funds stepped in at one point to prevent the bourse from further losses, the market kept falling in line with its regional counterparts, they said.
The TAIEX closed down 205.58 points, or 2.79 percent, at 7,151.19, after moving between 7,149.36 and 7,253.10 on turnover of NT$83.91 billion (US$2.83 billion).
At the end of the session, the machinery and electronics sector suffered the steepest decline among the eight largest sectors on the market, finishing down 3.4 percent, while the foodstuff sector closed up 0.1 percent.
Economist Kyu Eikan dies
Taiwan-born economic commentator Kyu Eikan (邱永漢) has died of heart failure at the age of 88, Japanese media reported yesterday.
Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported that only close relatives attended the funeral of the economic guru, who died two days earlier. A memorial service is to be held at a later date.
The report said that Kyu, who was born in Taiwan in 1924 to a Taiwanese father and a Japanese mother, took part in the Taiwanese independence movement after graduating from Tokyo University and later fled to Hong Kong.
He moved to Japan in 1954 with the ambition of becoming a writer and he used his experience in Hong Kong as the basis for a novel of the same name, which later won Japan’s prestigious Naoki Prize, a literary award that honors writers biennially. He obtained Japanese citizenship in 1980.
Kyu, whose business acumen in investment earned him the title of “the god of making money,” wrote more than 450 works.
Unpaid leave declines
The number of workers on unpaid leave has dropped by 73 people over the past two weeks, the Council of Labor Affairs said on Wednesday.
As of Tuesday, 24 companies had reached agreements with their employees on unpaid leave, with 2,207 workers currently on furlough, the latest statistics from the council showed.
The figure represented a decrease of workers on furlough from April 30, when 2,280 workers from 23 companies had agreed to take unpaid leave.
Software deal inked
The Institute for Information Industry on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with two Japanese groups on the development of embedded software.
Feng Ming-hui (馮明惠), director general of the Smart Network System Institute under the Taiwanese organization, signed the agreement with representatives from Fujisoft Inc and the Open Embedded Software Foundation in Tokyo, the organization said in a statement.
The three sides will develop embedded software and are expected to jointly carry out tests on the Android system early next month, it said.
NT dollar follows bourse down
The New Taiwan dollar fell against the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.07 to close at NT$29.630 as traders moved more funds into the greenback as a safe haven amid rising concerns over the debt problems in Greece, dealers said.
A plunge in the local bourse also placed downward pressure on the NT dollar throughout the trading session amid gloomy sentiment toward the economic fundamentals at home and abroad, they said.
Turnover totaled US$914 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