FINANCE
Fubon to recruit 40 MAs
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), one of the leading financial holding companies in Taiwan, yesterday announced a plan to hire a total of 40 management associates (MA) for eight different teams this year, marking the largest MA recruitment in history. The MA recruitment plan would be part of the financial holding company’s annual recruitment plan to hire a total of 8,500 employees, following the company’s fast expansion and strong profitability last year. The financial holding company has recruited nearly 160 management associates over the past 10 years, making them among the important human resources for the company, Fubon Financial said in a statement. Fubon Financial will start visiting outstanding colleges across the nation from next month to promote its recruitment plan, hoping to develop more talents for the financial industry, the statement added.
ELECTRONICS
AUO capital plan approved
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the nation’s No. 2 LCD panelmaker, yesterday said the board has approved a capital spending of NT$51.53 billion for technology upgrade and new capacity buildup. The board also gave the green light to increase its holding in color filter maker Toppan CFI Taiwan (台灣凸版國際彩光) by NT$4.43 billion. After purchasing additional 478 million shares of Toppan CFI Taiwan, AUO will fully own the color filter maker.
STEEL
China steel to recruit 358
China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation’s biggest steelmaker, yesterday said it planned to recruit 358 engineers and technicians this year in order to cope with workforce demand for new production lines and to fill vacancy left by retirees. China Steel will started accepting resumes yesterday and will continue to until March 4. Written tests will be held on March 21 and oral tests will take place from April 25 and May 3.
SUPERCONDUCTORS
MediaTek ‘in one of three’
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), one of Taiwan’s leading integrated circuit designers, yesterday said that due to an increase in its smartphone chip shipments, the company has estimated that one in three smartphones in the global market uses its chips. Last year, smartphone chip shipments from the IC designer topped 350 million units, up more than 50 percent from a year earlier, reflecting strong global demand. MediaTek said it has put great effort into developing 4G smartphone chips, helping the company penetrate the global low-to-high end smartphone market. As a result, MediaTek’s smartphone chips have been winning popularity globally.
CHINA
PBOC injects US$32.8bn
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) added the most cash to the money market in a year as increasing demand for funds before the Lunar New Year holidays drove the overnight interbank rate to a five-week high. The central bank injected a net 205 billion yuan (US$32.8 billion) this week, the most since January last year, when the festival break started Jan. 31. The cash shortage has been aggravated as investors sought funds for initial public share offerings ahead of the week-long holiday that begins on Wednesday next week this year. The PBOC on Wednesday said it will expand a lending facility nationwide to ensure money rates remain stable. The overnight repurchase rate rose five basis points to 3.06 percent as of 5:27pm in Shanghai, according to a weighted average from the National Interbank Funding Center. That was the highest since Jan. 5.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts