Chinese police are investigating a troubled state-managed metal exchange for criminal offenses, Chinese officials said late on Tuesday, months after the exchange failed to pay investors.
Fanya Metals Exchange (汎亞有色金屬交易所), which claims to be the world’s largest minor-metals exchange and manage about 40 billion yuan (US$6.2 billion) in assets, has defaulted on payments to a reported 220,000 investors since April because of declining commodity prices worldwide.
The exchange, in the city of Kunming, offered investors a bet on increased metal prices, promising some speculators double-digit returns on their investments.
Police have opened an investigation into the exchange on suspicion of “illegal business practices,” a statement on the city’s news portal said.
The announcement comes as Fanya chairman Shan Jiuliang (單九良) has been missing since Oct. 15, according to a stock exchange statement from Imagi International Holdings Ltd (意馬國際), another company Shan chairs.
Imagi said Shan had missed two board meetings.
Incensed Fanya investors seized Shan at a Shanghai hotel in August and handed him over to police, reports said.
He was later released.
In October, the payment crisis sparked protests in Beijing and Shanghai, with police detaining hundreds of people in the capital.
Yu Haichao, who was detained when she traveled to Beijing to participate in the protests, said she was unsure whether she could get her money back even after Fanya was probed.
She invested more than 170,000 yuan from her child’s education fund in the exchange.
Police forced her and other protesters to sign a pledge saying they would not attend any gathering related to the exchange, Yu said earlier, and the following day officials took her back to her home province, Shanxi.
“Police built a case for Fanya, but I don’t know whether it is a good thing or a bad one for investors,” Yu told reporters yesterday. “I feel like the case is just a consolation to people and [a way] to maintain social stability.”
The exchange’s payment problems predate China’s market rout earlier this year.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”