Stock market closes higher
Shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange closed higher yesterday, the last trading session of the year, as the financial sector, led by heavyweight Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), attracted rotational buying, dealers said.
The market also got a boost from smartphone vendor HTC Corp (宏達電), which built on Thursday’s rally to breach the NT$300 mark amid optimism over sales of the company’s Butterfly model, they said.
The weighted index closed up 51.90 points, or 0.66 percent, at 7,699.50, after on turnover of NT$70.15 billion (US$2.41 billion).
Nanya raises funds
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s biggest DRAM chipmaker, yesterday raised NT$9 billion in a new fund as scheduled, completing its first lag of two-stage fund raising program to offer 10.94 billion shares, according to a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Companies under the umbrella of Formosa Plastic Group (台塑集團), have subscribed to the 5.29 billion in common shares issued by Nanya Technology for NT$1.7 per share via private placement.
HTC Butterfly popular in Japan
Local telecoms operators Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信) will join bigger rival Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) in selling HTC Corp’s (宏達電) new HTC Butterfly smartphone from January 1, after the phone gained popularity in Japan and Taiwan.
Taiwan Mobile subscribers will have to pay NT$7,990 for the smartphone plus a minimal monthly fee of NT$1,398 for a 2-year service contract, the phone company said yesterday.
Far EasTone users will pay NT$7,990 for the phone and a slightly lower monthly fee of NT$1,373 for 2 years.
Electric motorbike sales up
The Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) said yesterday it has targeted a 50 percent year-on-year increase in electric motorbike sales in 2013 because of growing environmental awareness.
Citing an internal assessment, the IDB predicted that sales of electric motorbikes would hit 12,000 units in 2013, up sharply from about 8,000 units sold between Jan. 1 and Dec. 22 of this year.
Unit sales during the Jan. 1-Dec. 22 period rose 10 percent from 2011 because of growing environmental awareness and government subsidies.
Syndicated loans decrease
Syndicated loan volume in Taiwan witnessed a 23 percent drop for this year, a report issued by Thomson Reuters Loan Pricing Corp said yesterday.
Syndicated loan volume totaled US$31.7 billion in Taiwan this year, from US$41.2 billion recorded last year, the report’s data showed.
Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) syndicated loan volume for this year reached US$308.5 billion, a 10 percent drop from last year, with the number of transactions also falling to 1,024, from the previous year’s 1,081, the report said.
Japan, typically isolated from other Asia loan markets, set a new record with US$324 billion in loan volume, surpassing the previous year’s record of US$287 billion.
New Taiwan dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar weakened against the US dollar yesterday, down NT$0.01 to close at the day’s low of NT$29.136 after the local central bank bought into the greenback, helping the unit reverse its earlier losses by the end of the session, dealers said.
The expanded turnover showed the central bank’s aggressive buying in the US currency throughout the session in a bid to slow down the pace of the Taiwan dollar’s appreciation and strengthen the island’s global competitiveness, they said.
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