INSURERS
China allows Fubon branch
Fubon Property & Casualty Insurance (富邦財產保險), a subsidiary of Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), has obtained approval from the Chinese Insurance Regulatory Commission to open a branch in China’s Sichuan Province. Fubon Financial said that the branch in Sichuan will help Fubon Property & Casualty Insurance extend its reach in the Chinese market. Fubon Property & Casualty said that it hopes to become one of the top 10 insurers in Sichuan within five years by applying the 50 years of experience gained by its parent company in Taiwan. According to Fubon Financial, the property and casualty insurance market in Sichuan is the fifth-largest among the 31 provinces and major cities in China and has plenty of room to grow because Beijing is gearing up to develop its western region economically. Fubon Financial said Sichuan has many Taiwanese-invested firms, and their strong demand for property and casualty insurance coverage could be an engine of growth for the insurer’s new branch, which is to be in Chengdu.
PETROCHEMICALS
CPC unveils Kaohsiung plan
State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 中油), yesterday said it signed an agreement to set up a joint venture in Kaohsiung for production of value-added petrochemical products. Under the agreement, CPC, Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀) and KH NeoChem Co (KHNC) of Japan are to invest a total of NT$13.7 billion (US$434 million) to build a plant in the Lin Hai Industrial Park. CPC and KHNC will each hold a 47 percent stake in the venture, which will be called Taiwan-Japan Oxo Chemical Industries Inc, while Mega Bank will take the remaining 6 percent, CPC said in a statement. The KHNC input will be the largest single petrochemical investment by a Japanese enterprise in years, according to the Investment Commission. Annual production capacity of Taiwan-Japan Oxo Chemical Industries has been set at 180,000 tonnes of isononyl alcohol and 21,000 tonnes of butene trimer, two value-added petrochemical products. CPC said commercial operations of the plant are scheduled to begin in 2019, but the construction timetable has yet to be finalized, pending approval by the Kaohsiung City Government. The plant is expected to create more than 150 jobs, generate about NT$20 billion in production value annually and contribute about NT$200 million in annual tax revenue, CPC said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Comic fair opens
Enthusiastic comic fans poured into the Taipei International Comics and Animation Festival on its opening day on Tuesday, eager to snatch up limited-edition products. Swarms of fans were seen lining up at the festival venue early and rushing to the most popular stalls when the fair opened at 10am. A total of 96,000 people visited the festival on its opening day, similar to the opening day figure for last year and an increase from the 75,000 in 2013, according to the organizer, the Taipei-based Chinese Animation and Comic Publishers Association. Some fans had been waiting in line for as long as one month. About 60 exhibitors are taking part in the festival, now in its third year. Organizers said they hope it will attract 400,000 visitors this year. The festival runs through Sunday at the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall.
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
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