BANKING
CTBC plans for Tokyo Star
CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) plans to restructure recent acquisition Tokyo Star Bank Ltd in the next three years, CTBC President Daniel Wu (吳一揆) said at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting yesterday. He said the restructuring plan would focus on strengthening the Japanese bank’s corporate and personal banking divisions. Beyond CTBC’s own banking presence in Japan, it has also signed memorandums of understanding with 15 financial institutions there that will help it tap into the small and medium-sized enterprise market and heighten its role in the country’s financial markets, the CTBC president said.
TECHNOLOGY
Sales of panels rise in May
Global shipments of large-sized panels rose in May, driven by better sales of laptop and tablet computers, a local flat screen research institute said yesterday. May shipments were 69.41 million units worldwide, up 6.3 percent from April, with sales of tablet panels growing at a faster rate than other categories, WitsView said in a research note.
Tablet panel shipments rose 12.4 percent month-on-month to 18.11 million units in May, while TV panel shipments were up 1.5 percent month-on-month and 2.3 percent year-on-year to 20.81 million units, the note added.
Large-sized panel shipments in June will be on a par with those of May, WitsView said, but growth will be offset by declines in shipments of TV, monitor and laptop panels.
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],”
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
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