FINANCE
Wealth management eyed
The Financial Supervisory Commission is to ease regulations and approve new wealth management programs by the end of this year, Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said. The move is expected to help banks and stock brokerages develop their wealth management businesses and compete with their peers in Hong Kong and Singapore, Koo said in an interview, which was reported yesterday by major Chinese-language newspapers. He did not elaborate on details of the new programs, saying that the commission would first review existing programs run at local lenders’ offshore and domestic banking units. It might also ease restrictions on structured notes to lure more professional investors, he said.
EMPLOYMENT
Export zones to hold fairs
The nation’s export processing zones in Kaohsiung’s Nanzih District (楠梓) and Pingtung County are to offer up to 481 employment opportunities at two job fairs on Friday, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. The openings are at 27 companies, including OSE Corp (華泰電子), ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投資控股), DingZing Corp (鼎基) and Sinpro Electronics Co (星博電子). The fairs would be held separately in Kaohsiung and Pingtung, the ministry said, adding that the vacancies are for jobs such as technicians, production assistants, engineers and managers.
EQUITIES
TAIEX slides on chip shares
Local shares yesterday closed below 10,600 points as the semiconductor sector came under pressure, sending ripples through the broader market. Market sentiment remained cautious as investors spotted futures on US equity markets falling amid rising trade tensions between the US and China. The TAIEX ended down 76.64 points, or 0.72 percent, at 10,558.21, on turnover of NT$104.651 billion (US$3.33 billion), Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$7.19 billion of shares on the main board, the data showed.
ENERGY
Huaneng could make unit
China Huaneng Group Co’s (華能集團) plan to buy the remaining shares in its Hong Kong-listed wind power subsidiary could be part of an effort to create a new green energy unit. Huaneng Renewables Corp (華能新能源) on Monday said in a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that the state-owned parent intends to make an offer for all outstanding shares, which could lead to privatization and delisting. If completed, Huaneng Group could consolidate the wind power unit with other assets, including solar farms it aims to acquire through a separate deal, analysts said.
MOBILE PAYMENTS
European firms team up
Seven European mobile payment systems yesterday said they are joining forces, in a move seen as an attempt to create a regional standard for smartphone payments that does not require Apple Inc, Google, Visa Inc or Mastercard Inc. Mark Wraa-Hansen, CEO of Denmark’s MobilePay system, said that the European Mobile Payment System Association combines 25 million registered users, about 1 million merchant acceptance points and more than 350 partner banks. The association is to focus on making it possible to use mobile payments seamlessly across Belgium, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Switzerland and four Nordic nations, Wraa-Hansen said. The association, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, has not yet spoken with the European Commission.
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