FINANCIAL SERVICES
CTBC acquisition approved
CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) shareholders yesterday approved the acquisition of Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽保險) and multiple fund-raising plans. Shareholders also approved a plan to boost share capital to NT$230 billion (US$7.38 billion) from NT$180 billion and gave the go-ahead to a proposal to distribute a cash dividend of NT$0.81 and a stock dividend of NT$0.81 per common share based on CTBC’s net profit of NT$42.17 billion, or earnings per share of NT$2.58, last year.
TRADE
Cross-strait talk announced
The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it would convene an exchange of opinions with Beijing about the proposed cross-strait trade in goods agreement at the Grand Hotel in Taipei on Thursday. The ministry said the meeting would be to exchange opinions on simplifying customs and quarantine inspections, aiming to reduce the differences on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. No documents are to be signed during the informal meeting, the ministry said. Taiwan and China completed the 10th round of talks in Beijing in April, but no significant progress was made on the trade in goods agreement.
TELECOMS
Outage leads to 5% bill cut
Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s No. 2 mobile telecom, yesterday said it would provide a 5 percent reduction in the phone bills of subscribers affected by a 95-minute loss of signal on Sunday. Telecoms are required to provide a bill reduction as compensation only when service disruptions last for at least 2 hours based on the regulations, the company said in a statement. However, Taiwan Mobile said it plans to compensate subscribers for Sunday’s disruption. The company said it was still calculating how many subscribers were affected by the outage, which lasted from 12:30pm to 2:05pm, affecting users almost everywhere in the nation and drawing a large volume of complaints. The outage also affected Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信) users because the carrier shares Taiwan Mobile’s network. It was not the first time this year that Taiwan Mobile users were hit by an outage. On March 27, Asia Pacific Telecom 4G users experienced a loss of signal for five hours. Taiwan Mobile blamed the outage on provisional system instability while it was expanding its core network to improve its 4G services.
HEALTHCARE
Siemens, Yuanpei sign pact
Siemens AG yesterday inked an agreement with Yuanpei University (元培醫事科技大學) to deepen students’ knowledge base and to promote industrial academic interchanges. Yuanpei University president Lin Chih-Cheng (林志城) and Siemens president and chief executive Erdal Elver said they would work together to cultivate the nation’s outstanding medical talents. “Siemens and Yuanpei University jointly set the foundation for an innovative cooperation platform between the healthcare and academic sectors. Siemens will integrate resources from our multinational network with expertise in the medical department of Yuanpei University to cultivate talent and create more value in the healthcare sector,” Elver said at the signing ceremony. Siemens will not only pass on up-to-date knowledge to students, but also donate medical imaging equipment and facilities to the Yuanpei Medical Imaging Museum, enabling the university to enrich its collection so more students can understand the history of medical imaging.
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