Ruentex Development Co (潤泰新), a major supermarket operator and property developer, yesterday opened a new shopping center at Songshan Railway Station in Taipei, targeting NT$1 billion (US$34.4 million) revenue a year.
The three-floor Citylink shopping center is part of Ruentex’s plan to help revamp the Songshan Railway Station, which it won in a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project bid for NT$3.2 billion in 2007 with the right to use the land for 52 years.
After the first floor of the shopping center opened to the public yesterday, the second floor will be opened by the second quarter of next year and the third floor is set to open in the second quarter of 2014, Citylink vice president Eason Lin (林裕盛) said.
Lin said the company would rent the first floor to restaurants, the second floor to restaurants and clothes shops, and the third floor to cultural and creative businesses.
The project also includes a 17-floor station complex and a 21-floor multifunction building required by the Taiwan Railway Administrations, Ruentex chairman Jean Tsang-jiunn (簡滄圳) said.
“Currently about 30,000 passengers a day pass through the station. The number of passengers will more than double after the station becomes a Mass Rapid Transit [MRT] station,” Jean said.
In addition to the Songshan project, Ruentex has 18 more projects to be carried out in the next 10 years, including three other similar railway projects close to Neihu MRT station, Nangang MRT station, and New Taipei City’s (新北市) Sanchong District (三重), he said.
“Nangang will be a joint station for railway, MRT and high-speed railway, and Sanchong will be the intersection point for MRT Sinjhuang Line and Taoyuan International Airport MRT,” he said.
Neihu and Nangang projects are expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2014, while the Sinjhuang project is expected for the end of 2014, Jean said.
Ruentex’s revenue increased year-on-year by 1.77 percent and dropped month-on-month by 14.72 percent to NT$435.78 million last month, after its first 11-months revenue fell by 17.3 percent to NT$6.17 billion from a year earlier.
Ruentex shares fell 1.65 percent to NT$59.5 yesterday, up 83.64 percent since the beginning of the year, the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s data showed.
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ¥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a