Capital Securities Corp (群益金鼎證券) yesterday denied a rumor that it is expanding into a financial holding company. The rumor began after its board approved plans to raise its stakeholding in an investment affiliate late last year.
The rumor also reflects market speculation about property developer Hong Tai Group’s (宏泰集團) ambitions. Hong Tai is a backer of the Capital Group (群益集團) and has all the components of a financial holding company, as the conglomerate’s units include Hontai Life Insurance Co (宏泰人壽) and EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰銀行).
On Dec. 15 last year, Capital Securities’ board approved to spend NT$1.53 billion (US$51.71 million) to acquire a 24.04 percent stake in Capital Investment Trust Corp (群益投信) from Commerzbank AG.
The brokerage said the transaction makes it the largest shareholder in Capital Investment Trust, and it aims to yield synergistic gains from improved cross-selling and other ongoing collaborative efforts.
Capital Securities said the transaction would benefit both companies in terms of operational scale and efficiency, but reiterated that it has no immediate plans to expand into a financial holding company.
Its net income last year surged to NT$3.2 billion, compared with NT$1.2 billion the previous year, with earnings per share of NT$1.33.
Capital Securities president Chao Yung-fei (趙永飛) has said that the two companies would further their partnership between brokerage, proprietary trading and underwriting businesses, while the brokerage would serve as a liquidity provider for new products underwritten by Capital Investment Trust.
As of Nov. 30 last year, Capital Investment Trust managed NT$134 billion in assets, the third-highest of its peers and the biggest among firms that are not under a financial holding company.
Passive investment products such as exchange-traded funds have been well received by the market, Chao added.
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