ENERGY
Taipower to hold bond sale
State-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) plans to issue NT$17.1 billion (US$545 million) in unsecured corporate bonds next month. The funds raised from the bond sale would help finance several projects, such as the expansion of a coal power plant in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口) and an upgrade of its coal power plant in Kaohsiung’s Dalin District (大林), the company said on Thursday. The new bonds include NT$3.4 billion in five-year bonds with a yield of 0.72 percent, NT$7.3 billion in seven-year bonds with a yield of 0.8 percent and NT$6.4 billion in 10-year bonds with a yield of 0.85 percent, Taipower said.
BANKING
Credit cards hit new high
Credit card spending in June hit a new monthly high as more consumers swiped cards to pay their taxes during the tax season, according to the Financial Supervisory Commission. Credit card spending in June reached NT$328.2 billion, up NT$60.3 billion, or 22.51 percent, from May, commission data showed. Credit card spending in the first six months of this year reached about NT$1.60 trillion, with total spending for the year expected to surpass NT$3 trillion, the commission said.
STOCK EXCHANGE
Major retail traders back up
The number of major retail investors who traded more than NT$500 million in shares in the second quarter rose 30.99 percent from a quarter earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) said. There were 1,027 major market players during the April-to-June period, up from 784 in the first quarter, TWSE data showed. Prior to the first quarter, the number of major market players had remained above 1,000 for six quarters in a row.
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