BANKING
Branch opens in Changsha
State-run Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合庫銀行), the main subsidiary of Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding Co (合庫金控), on Monday opened a new branch in Changsha, China, to better serve Taiwanese companies based in the city and areas nearby. Taiwan Cooperative Financial chairman Jason Liao (廖燦昌) and top officials flew to Changsha for a commencement event. The new branch could help the lender strengthen yuan-related operations and meet the financing demands of Taiwanese firms in the region. Changsha ranks first in terms of competitiveness in midwestern China and ninth overall in the Chinese market, the bank said.
SMARTPHONES
HTC to establish China unit
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday said it plans to spend 450 million yuan (US$65.36 million) to establish a fully owned subsidiary in Shanghai to conduct research and development, industrial design and sales of mobile devices. The investment is part of HTC’s long-term development strategy, it said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The announcement followed the firm’s board on March 15 approving a sale of plots of land and facilities in Shanghai for 630 million yuan as part of an asset rationalization plan, with HTC expected to book disposal gains of 147.6 million yuan from the transaction.
DISPLAY MAKERS
Lextar to build in Chuzhou
Lextar Corp (隆達), an LED manufacturing arm of AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), yesterday said it inked an agreement with the Chuzhou city government in China’s Anhui Province to build a manufacturing plant for LED products in the city’s industrial park. Lextar said it would hold a ground-breaking event before the end of this year and expects the new plant to become operational in 2019 with an estimated 3,000 employees. The new plant is to focus on manufacturing blue/white LED products, backlights and automotive lighting products, the firm said. Cumulative revenue totaled NT$3.14 billion (US$103.27 million) in the first three months of this year, dropping 7.36 percent from NT$3.39 billion in the same period last year, company data showed.
AIRLINES
Ex-EVA boss registers firm
Former EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) chairman Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒) on Tuesday last week registered an investment company with NT$10 million in capital as part of preparations for his return to the airline industry, data from the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Department of Commerce showed. The company, wholly owned by Chang, is to oversee the founding of his new carrier, Star Airlines (星宇航空), former EVA spokesperson Nieh Kuo-wei (聶國維) was quoted as saying by local media yesterday. Chang was ousted from EVA in March last year following a family feud over business succession.
RETAIL
Hyundai to make local debut
Eastern Home Shopping & Leisure Co Ltd (東森購物) yesterday said it was working with South Korea’s Hyundai Home Shopping Network Corp to introduce Hyundai’s best-selling products into the local market, in a bid to boost its sales growth. The Taiwanese company told a news conference that the two firms would also exchange TV shopping program production information and techniques. Eastern Home Shopping & Leisure, established in 1999, was the first TV shopping operator in Taiwan and has more than 8.8 million registered members and five TV channels in the nation, company data show.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts