BANKING
Credit cards hit record high
The nation’s credit card spending rose 8.3 percent last year to NT$2.62 trillion (US$89.7 billion) from NT$2.42 trillion in 2016, Financial Supervisory Commission data showed yesterday. The figure represents a record level and the fourth consecutive year credit card spending exceeded the NT$2 trillion mark, Banking Bureau Deputy Director Wang Li-chun (王立群) said at a news conference.
ENERGY
LPG products to cost less
State-run refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday said it has decided to lower prices for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) items this month, while keeping the prices for liquefied natural gas (LNG) products unchanged. From today, prices for household LPG are to decrease by NT$2.7 per kilogram and by NT$1.4 per liter for LPG used in cars to reflect a decline in international LPG contract prices, CPC said in a statement. The price of a 20kg household gas cylinder is to drop by NT$54, CPC said. Separately, the refiner said Lee Shun-chin (李順欽) on Wednesday formally became the company’s new president, replacing Liu Cheng-hsie (劉晟熙), who is to become chairman of CPC Shell Lubricants Co Ltd (中殼潤滑油), a CPC subsidiary.
TECHNOLOGY
Tri Chemical plans plant
Tri Chemical Electronic Materials Taiwan Inc (三化電子材料), a subsidiary of Japan’s Tri Chemical Laboratories Inc, plans to invest NT$300 million in setting up a new plant in Miaoli’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) branch of the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), aiming to develop it into a major base for semiconductor materials, local online news outlet investor.com yesterday reported. The investment would also focus on the development of energy materials and equipment related to chemical medicine, the report said. Annual revenue generated from the new plant is expected to exceed NT$500 million three years after its establishment, it said.
MANUFACTURING
Tatung chairman resigns
Home appliance maker Tatung Co (大同) yesterday said chairman Lin Wei-shan (林蔚山) has decided to step down from his post and the company’s board has agreed that president Lin Kuo Wen-yen (林郭文艷) is to replace him. The move came after several shareholders demanded Lin Wei-shan resign over a corporate embezzlement scandal. He has appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling by the Taiwan High Court in August last year that sentenced him to eight years in prison for funneling the company’s funds into Nature Worldwide Technology Corp (通達) and violating the Securities Exchange Act (證券交易法). Lin Kuo Wen-yen is Lin Wei-shan’s wife.
MANUFACTURING
FPG’s low-carbon move
Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) is to make the circular economy one of its top priorities this year, group chairman William Wong (王文淵) said at a year-end banquet for Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑) yesterday. The group aims to transform its plant in Kaohsiung’s Renwu District (仁武) into a “low carbon” production base, using natural gas as fuel to replace coal, a Formosa Plastics official said on the sidelines of the gathering. Wang also delivered a relatively positive near-term business outlook, saying that the group’s earnings performance so far “meets his expectations.” Four major units of the group saw their combined net income reach NT$237.25 billion last year, a 14.2 percent annual increase, data showed.
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
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