Financials lead TAIEX up
The TAIEX rose 0.91 percent yesterday, backed by gains in financial and electronics stocks, but volume was at its lowest since January 2009 as concerns remained over global economic fundamentals, dealers said.
The benchmark index closed up 64.37 points at the day’s high of 7,136 after hitting a low of 7,047.32, on turnover of NT$44.17 billion (US$1.49 billion).
Those factors have limited volume since mid-March. Trading volume for all of last month was NT$1.55 trillion, with a daily average of NT$75.8 billion, about 24 percent lower than the daily average in March, and has averaged NT$71.7 billion so far this month.
A total of 1,847 stocks closed up on Monday and 1,736 finished down, while 522 remained unchanged.
All of the market’s eight major stock categories closed up, with the financial sector scoring the highest gain at 1.3 percent.
Ta Chong Bank loses luster
Ta Chong Bank Ltd (大眾銀行), partly owned by Carlyle Group LP, saw its share price fall the most in five months yesterday, after Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) last week stopped assessing it as a potential acquisition target.
The shares sank 6.9 percent to NT$10.20, the biggest drop since Dec. 19 last year. The benchmark TAIEX gained 0.91 percent.
Yuanta gained 3.1 percent to NT$13.25 and Fubon advanced 0.7 percent to NT$28.65.
Carlyle bought a 36.6 percent stake in Ta Chong Bank for NT$21.5 billion in 2007.
Acer holds share in India
Acer Inc (宏碁) continued to hold fourth place in India’s PC market, where high inflation has slowed consumer purchases of electronics devices, researcher Gartner Inc said on Saturday.
The combined desktop and laptop PC market in India totaled nearly 2.8 million units in the first quarter of this year, a 6.6 percent increase over the first quarter of last year, according to Gartner.
China’s Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) topped all vendors with 14.9 percent market share, followed by Dell Inc at 14.0 percent, Hewlett-Packard Co with 13.7 percent, Acer with 11.9 percent and local player HCL Infosystems with 5.8 percent.
Malaysians protest project
Hundreds of residents of Pengerang, Malaysia, defied a downpour on Saturday to stage a demonstration against a planned petrochemical project to be built with investment from Taiwan’s Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Co (國光石化).
Led by six self-help groups, over 500 villagers in the small town in southern Malaysia chanted slogans in the protest over the controversial project that was scrapped in Taiwan due to environmental concerns.
Saturday’s demonstrators opposed a proposed relocation of residents, a Mandarin school, graveyards containing nearly 3,000 tombs and land seizures.
The president of an alliance formed by six groups of activists said they are not against development projects, but are asking the government to take the residents’ basic rights more seriously.
NT dollar ends unchanged
The New Taiwan dollar closed unchanged at NT$29.650 against the US dollar yesterday, halting a three-session slide as speculation that Greece would remain in the eurozone buoyed demand for emerging-market assets.
The NT dollar has lost 1.4 percent against the greenback this month. The currency’s one-month implied volatility, a measure of exchange-rate swings traders use to price options, dropped five basis points to 5.7 percent.
Turnover totaled US$466 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