Fubon to buy ICBC shares
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) yesterday said that its life insurance unit, Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽), is set to buy up to US$500 million of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC, 中國工商銀行) preferred shares.
Among the US$500 million of shares, yuan-denominated preferred shares would not exceed US$150 million, Fubon said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The actual trading volume will be disclosed upon the issuance of the shares.
The preferred shares are to be traded on the Hong Kong stock market.
Shin Kong sales up 5 percent
Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store Co Ltd (新光三越百貨) on Monday said that its anniversary sales promotion this year generated about NT$18 billion (US$578.67 million) in revenue, up 5 percent from the same period last year.
The strong performance might help the company hit its annual sales target of a record-high NT$76 billion this year. That would represent 3 percent annual growth.
Shin Kong Mitsukoshi is to launch an 18-day annual sales promotion at its Taipei Railway Station branch from Thursday next week and it has targeted growing revenue by 2 percent annually to NT$2 billion.
Sony to launch Android watch
Sony Mobile said yesterday that its new SmartWatch 3 will be available on the local market soon, as the Japanese company is set to introduce to Taiwan a wearable device that runs on Google Inc’s Android Wear operating system.
The SmartWatch 3 is expected to hit local stores in the middle of this month with a price tag of NT$8,990.
The waterproof smartwatch features a 1.6-inch display with 320x320 pixels, a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal memory and a 420mAh battery that allows up to two days of normal use.
The SmartWatch 3 will vibrate to alert the wearer to specific information, such as weather updates, messages and calendar reminders, Sony Mobile said.
NT$88 Macau flights touted
Travelers looking to visit Macau will be able to do so practically for free — if they manage to grab one of 5,000 one-way tickets being sold by Tigerair Taiwan (台灣虎航) for just NT$88.
The low-cost carrier, a joint venture between China Airlines (中華航空) and Singapore’s Tiger Airways, yesterday said the ultra-cheap tickets are to go on sale at noon today.
Tigerair Taiwan is scheduled to launch Taoyuan-Macau flights on Dec. 17 followed the next day by services between Greater Kaohsiung and Macau.
The NT$88 tickets, which do not include tax, can be used through March next year, but passengers will not be allowed to use them over the Lunar New Year holiday from Feb. 13 to Feb. 24.
Wintek to cut 610 jobs
Financially troubled touchpanel maker Wintek Corp (勝華) on Monday said that it is planning to cut 610 jobs in its latest restructuring.
The company has already sent out the first batch of pink slips, Wintek said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
That brought its job losses in Taiwan to about 2,000, which accounts for 50 percent of the company’s workers at local factories before the layoffs.
Wintek said it would not rule out the possibility of further job cuts.
Wintek has 24,646 employees, mostly in China.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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