Insurers open after receivership
Troubled insurers Global Life Insurance Co (國寶人壽) and Singfor Life Insurance Co (幸福人壽) maintained normal operations yesterday, after being placed under government receivership a day earlier, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said.
There are 15 instances of policy terminations at Global Life and another three at Singfor Life, the commission said yesterday, adding that it would monitor any abnormal developments.
The two insurers had failed to contain financial losses or management malpractices, the commission said.
Vehicle energy standards raised
Taiwan has revised and upgraded standards for permissible energy consumption for new vehicles by an average of more than 15 percent, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said on Tuesday, a day after the mininstry imposed overall total energy consumption controls.
The Bureau of Energy said the revised measures will take effect in 2016 starting with motorcycles and moving on to other types of vehicles the following year.
Vehicles that fail to comply with the standards of permissible energy consumption are to be barred from being imported or sold in the domestic market, the bureau said.
Blasts won’t hurt GDP: analysts
Taiwan’s economy is expected to grow at least 3 percent this year with minimal impact from the series of deadly gas explosions in Greater Kaohsiung, Academia Sinica research fellow Ray Chou (周雨田) said on Tuesday.
Industrial Technology Research Institute senior researcher Peter Chen (陳志強) echoed that view.
Chen said the impact of the July 31 and Aug. 1 explosions will be negligible because the petrochemical industry does not contribute much to Taiwan’s overall GDP.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, which in May forecast the economy will expand 2.98 percent this year, is scheduled to update its GDP growth forecast tomorrow.
Taiwan No. 2 for Yahoo apps
Taiwan had the second-most users of Yahoo Inc’s mobile apps of any market in the Asia-Pacific region as of June, behind only India, the Internet portal said yesterday, attributing the result in part to releases of Taiwan-exclusive apps.
However, Yahoo did not disclose the number of people using its mobile apps in Taiwan or across the region.
Yahoo said that following the introduction of more localized services, about 9 million Taiwanese connected to the company’s services via a mobile device in June, nearly double the number seen in January last year, according to the company’s internal data.
“We have high expectations for the Taiwan market, and we hope to continue to bring well-received global mobile products to Taiwan,” Yahoo senior director for mobile and emerging products Fernando Delgado told a press briefing.
Catcher Q2 profit up 22.1%
Metal casings supplier Catcher Technology Co (可成) on Monday reported second-quarter net profit increased 22.1 percent from a quarter earlier and rose 0.2 percent from a year earlier to NT$3.64 billion.
Earnings per share were NT$4.84 in the past quarter, compared with NT$3.97 in the previous quarter and NT$4.84 a year earlier.
The company’s gross margin rose 7.9 percentage points in the April-to-June period from a quarter earlier to 49.2 percent, the highest level in 11 quarters, and its operating margin hit 38.7 percent, up 7.9 percentage points from the first quarter. They were also higher than the year-earlier levels, when gross margin was 44.48 percent percent and operating margin was 34.68 percent.
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