FINANCIAL SERVICES
Yuanta to buy Vietnam firm
Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) said on Thursday that its brokerage unit, Yuanta Securities Co (元大證券), had agreed to acquire Vietnam’s The First Securities Joint Stock Co for 365.5 billion dong (US$12.56 million). The deal, which is pending regulatory approvals, is Yuanta Financial’s latest effort to expand through mergers and acquisitions after the firm signed a deal with New York Life Insurance Co to buy its local subsidiary for NT$100 million (US$3.32 million) on Tuesday.
RETAIL
Perfume battle over
The Intellectual Property Office won a legal battle on Thursday after the Supreme Administrative Court turned down a request to register “La Vie Est Belle” as a trademark for a French perfume. The court supported the office’s ruling in November 2011 rejecting Lancome Parfums et Beaute & Cie SA’s application to register the name as a trademark for one of its products on the grounds that the sentence meaning “life is beautiful” in French is not inherently distinctive.
ELECTRONICS
MStar dividend approved
Shareholders of MStar Semiconductor Inc (晨星半導體), the world’s biggest supplier of chips used in LCD TVs, yesterday approved an NT$6 cash dividend per share, representing a 2.78 percent dividend yield. Last year’s earnings were NT$4.5 billion, or NT$8.53 per share.
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
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