INSURANCE
Cathay bid gets green light
The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday approved an application by Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽), the life insurance arm of Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), to acquire a 100 percent stake in US-based investment management services provider Conning Holdings Corp for NT$7.35 billion (US$234.8 million). In November last year, Cathay Life said its board decided to purchase Conning and all of its subsidiaries for US$240 million from Aquiline Capital Partners LLC and other shareholders. Cathay Financial said the deal is a significant step toward the firm’s goal of building a complete financial services platform with expertise in asset management, banking and insurance.
BANKING
FSC fines three lenders
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday fined a number of lenders a total of NT$8 million for violations of the Banking Act (銀行法), citing poor internal controls and lack of compliance. Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) was fined NT$4 million, while Deutsche Bank Taipei and BNP Paribas Taipei were fined NT$2 million each, the commission said in a statement.
TECHNOLOGy
Career to buy back shares
Career Technology Co Ltd (嘉聯益), a supplier of flexible printed circuit board for Apple Inc’s iPads, yesterday said its board had decided to implement a stock buyback plan, beginning yesterday and running through Aug. 7. The stock closed 2.79 percent lower at NT$20.90 yesterday before the company unveiled the plan. The board agreed to buy back up to 5 million shares, or 1.54 percent of its issued capital, at a price of NT$16.60 to NT$40 per share, Career said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company plans to spend up to NT$3.93 billion on the buyback and cancel the shares in a bid to increase earnings per share for its shareholders, the filing said.
DISPLAYS
Innolux market share rises
Innolux Corp (群創) saw its share of the global TV and PC panel market edge up 0.4 percentage points to 17 percent last quarter from the previous year, International Data Corp (IDC) said yesterday. The world’s third-largest LCD panel maker shipped 34.3 million TV and PC panels last quarter, up 4.6 percent from the previous year ago, IDC said. It said AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) ranked fourth last quarter, but saw its market share drop 0.8 percentage points to 13.7 percent from the previous year. South Korea’s LG Display Co and Samsung Display Corp maintained their first and second spots with market shares of 21.9 percent and 17.3 percent respectively, while China’s BOE Technology Group Co (京東方) expanded its market share to 12.3 percent after shipments spiked almost 21 percent year-on-year.
TECHNOLOGY
LED firms see sales fall
Taiwanese LED companies reported weak sales momentum and more than a 10 percent monthly sales decline last month, with LED chipmaker Epistar Corp’s (晶元光電) sales down 12.1 percent to NT$2.3 billion and LED chip packager Everlight Electronics Co’s (億光電子) sales down 9.2 percent to NT$2.2 billion. Even so, the firms were generally optimistic about the demand for lighting LEDs in the third quarter and expect sales momentum to recover by the second half of next quarter, aided by falling retail prices for residential lighting and aggressive promotions by tier-one brands.
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