BANKING
Cathay buys Scotiabank unit
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) yesterday said two subsidiaries have signed an agreement to acquire a Malaysian unit of the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) for US$255 million. In a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Cathay Financial said Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) and Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) would split the purchase at 49 percent and 51 percent respectively, adding that the deal is expected to be completed in the second half of this year. In March, Cathay Financial said that acquiring the Bank of Nova Scotia Bhd, a Kuala Lumpur-based subsidiary of the Canadian bank, would pave the way for its further expansion in Southeast Asia.
TELECOMS
CHT senior official to resign
Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecom, yesterday said chief financial officer and senior executive vice president Chen Bo-yung (陳伯鏞) would resign from his positions, effective on Thursday next week. Pending the appointment of Chen’s successor, Chunghwa Telecom said in a news release that its board has appointed president Sheih Chi-mau (謝繼茂) to serve as interim chief financial officer. Chen has been serving in the two positions since May 2014 at the invitation of then-Chunghwa Telecom chairman Rick Tsai (蔡力行). Tsai stepped down in December last year.
INDUSTRY
Hon Hai 98th on Forbes list
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) was ranked 98th on this year’s Forbes Global 2000 list of the world’s biggest and most powerful public companies, making it the only Taiwanese firm to feature in the top 100. This year, a total of 46 Taiwanese companies appeared on the list published on Wednesday, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), which was 127th, and Chunghwa Telecom at 720th. Other Taiwanese companies in the the top 1,000 are Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 870th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 884th and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) at 991st.
ELECTRONICS
InFocus to receive capital
Hon Hai is to make a capital injection of 98.71 million yuan (US$14.39 million) into indirectly owned subsidiary InFocus Precision Industry (Shenzhen) Co Ltd (益富可視精密工業) as additional working capital for long-term investments, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Thursday. The investment is to be carried out by a unit of Hon Hai’s Hong Kong-listed subsidiary FIH Mobile Ltd (富智康), with InFocus’ total registered capital to increase to approximately 140.80 million yuan, FIH said.
BANKING
Overdue mortgages hit high
Local banks’ outstanding mortgage loans last month grew 5 percent year-on-year to NT$6.42 trillion, a record high, while construction loans hit NT$1.66 trillion, up 2 percent and marking the fifth consecutive period of annual growth, the central bank said on Thursday. The Chinese-language Commercial Times newspaper yesterday said local lenders are reportedly offering mortgage rates as low as 1.44 percent per annum in a bid to grab a bigger piece of the home loan market amid large quantities of unoccupied housing and presale projects. Developers with good credit can obtain land and construction loans with interest rates as low as 1.8 percent and 2 percent respectively, compared with the 3 percent to 3.5 percent on offer two years ago, the newspaper said.
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