PHARMACEUTICALS
Eye-drug patent approved
Taiwan Liposome Co (台灣微脂體), a developer of generic drugs used to treat breast and ovarian cancer, on Friday said that the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office has approved its patent for a ophthalmic drug delivery system containing phospholipid and cholesterol. The company said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing that it has received patent protection for up to 20 years. The announcement came after the company secured the patent for prolonging drug lifetime in the eyes in the US and New Zealand in 2014 as well as from China and Japan last year. Taiwan Liposome has also filed ophthalmic drug delivery patent applications with authorities in Europe and Australia. Applications of the patent include the company’s new drug Prodex, the company said.
BANKING
Bad loans show uptick
The latest statistics compiled by the Financial Supervisory Commission showed a slight uptick in non-performing loans (NPL) made by Taiwanese banks in China, with total bad debts amounting to NT$365 million (US$11.04 million) as of the end of November last year. The commission’s data, released on Thursday, showed that the Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行) added bad debts of NT$36 million in November, following bad debts of NT$52 million incurred by the Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) in October and the NT$277 million NPL racked up by Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding Co (合庫金控) in 2014. Taiwanese banks reported total profits of NT$297.2 billion in the first 11 months of last year, down 2.5 percent from a year ago, driven by earnings declines of 23 percent at their Chinese branches and 11 percent at offshore banking units, the data showed.
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],”
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
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