EQUITIES
Fundraising hits new low
Equity fundraising by Taiwanese businesses has hit a new low since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis amid slowing economic growth and rock-bottom interest rates, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday. In the first half, the amount of capital raised through new share issues fell to NT$157.55 billion (US$4.91 billion), a decrease of 41.35 percent from the same period last year. Following consecutive interest rate cuts, companies have begun selecting bank loans to take advantage of low financing costs, the commission said.
SECURITY SERVICES
Secom opens retail outlets
Taiwan Secom Co (中興保全) yesterday said it would continue to diversify beyond its core security services business and maximize synergy between affiliates of its SIGMU Group. The company is aiming to encompass the dining, medical, home, transportation and entertainment needs of consumers. To do so, the company has opened two retail outlets in Taipei to showcase its new offerings, each with a monthly revenue of between NT$300,000 and NT$500,000. In addition, the company said that it would open at least one new store each month, setting a goal to open 200 such stores in the next three years.
RETAIL
Kindom inaugurates mall
Land developer and construction firm Kindom Construction Corp (冠德建設) yesterday inaugurated its Global Mall (環球購物中心), at Taipei’s Nangang Railway Station. The shopping mall targets commuters and travelers at the station, which services Taiwan Railways Administration trains, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (台灣高鐵) and Taipei’s MRT system. The newly built 8,595m2 shopping center will create hundreds of job opportunities and is expected to generate more than NT$700 million in revenue per year, Kindom chairman Timothy Ma (馬玉山) said yesterday.
STOCK MARKETS
TWSE touts governance
The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) on Monday said that after three years of efforts by the exchange to promote corporate governance, the quality of many listed companies’ shareholder meetings has improved significantly. According to a corporate governance blueprint issued by the exchange in 2013, listed companies are required to have their corporate governance practices evaluated by the TWSE and have consequently taken steps to improve their performance in this area. One of the exchange’s corporate governance initiatives was to get listed companies to hold shareholder meetings that give investors a platform to monitor the company’s operations and protect their interests. The campaign has been effective, as the quality of shareholder meetings has improved year after year and made a considerable leap compared with three years ago, seen through many different metrics, the TWSE said. A total of 614 listed companies, or more than 70 percent of those on the main bourse, had shareholders vote on every motion proposed at their shareholder meetings this year, up from 56 percent a year earlier, the TWSE said. About 93 percent of listed companies posted the results of their shareholder meetings on the TWSE’s Market Observation Post System on the same day that shareholder meetings were held, while more than half of all listed companies adopted e-voting to enable shareholders who could not attend the meeting to vote.
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