The strongest demand in a decade at Taiwan’s sale of bonds due in 2036 pushed the yield to a record low as banks sought higher returns following a series of cuts in interest rates.
The Ministry of Finance sold NT$30 billion (US$887 million) of the notes at 1.496 percent, lower than all 10 predictions in a Bloomberg survey of traders.
Investors bid for 2.29 times the amount offered, according to a government statement.
The nation’s lenders bought 62 percent of the securities, compared with an average of 40 percent at similar auctions in the past five years.
The central bank eased monetary policy at its past two quarterly meetings to boost economic growth, driving five-year and 10-year yields to unprecedented lows and narrowing the gap between short and long-term notes.
Appetite for the debt rebounded after demand waned at auctions of securities maturing in 20 years or more early last year amid an influx of higher-yielding bonds from foreign issuers.
Insurers took up 33 percent at yesterday’s offering.
“The yield curve is moving down, so banks looking for higher yields now need to go for longer duration,” said Tobby Lin, a fixed-income trader at Yuanta Securities Co (元大證券) in Taipei.
“Insurers still prefer foreign-currency bonds like they did in the past one or two years,” Lin said.
The difference in yield between two-year and 10-year debt has narrowed to 61 basis points from last year’s high of 101 basis points in March, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
That is near the lowest since September last year.
The 20-year yield has dropped from 1.54 percent in when-issued trading from the end of last week.
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