INSURERS
China allows Fubon branch
Fubon Property & Casualty Insurance (富邦財產保險), a subsidiary of Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), has obtained approval from the Chinese Insurance Regulatory Commission to open a branch in China’s Sichuan Province. Fubon Financial said that the branch in Sichuan will help Fubon Property & Casualty Insurance extend its reach in the Chinese market. Fubon Property & Casualty said that it hopes to become one of the top 10 insurers in Sichuan within five years by applying the 50 years of experience gained by its parent company in Taiwan. According to Fubon Financial, the property and casualty insurance market in Sichuan is the fifth-largest among the 31 provinces and major cities in China and has plenty of room to grow because Beijing is gearing up to develop its western region economically. Fubon Financial said Sichuan has many Taiwanese-invested firms, and their strong demand for property and casualty insurance coverage could be an engine of growth for the insurer’s new branch, which is to be in Chengdu.
PETROCHEMICALS
CPC unveils Kaohsiung plan
State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 中油), yesterday said it signed an agreement to set up a joint venture in Kaohsiung for production of value-added petrochemical products. Under the agreement, CPC, Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀) and KH NeoChem Co (KHNC) of Japan are to invest a total of NT$13.7 billion (US$434 million) to build a plant in the Lin Hai Industrial Park. CPC and KHNC will each hold a 47 percent stake in the venture, which will be called Taiwan-Japan Oxo Chemical Industries Inc, while Mega Bank will take the remaining 6 percent, CPC said in a statement. The KHNC input will be the largest single petrochemical investment by a Japanese enterprise in years, according to the Investment Commission. Annual production capacity of Taiwan-Japan Oxo Chemical Industries has been set at 180,000 tonnes of isononyl alcohol and 21,000 tonnes of butene trimer, two value-added petrochemical products. CPC said commercial operations of the plant are scheduled to begin in 2019, but the construction timetable has yet to be finalized, pending approval by the Kaohsiung City Government. The plant is expected to create more than 150 jobs, generate about NT$20 billion in production value annually and contribute about NT$200 million in annual tax revenue, CPC said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Comic fair opens
Enthusiastic comic fans poured into the Taipei International Comics and Animation Festival on its opening day on Tuesday, eager to snatch up limited-edition products. Swarms of fans were seen lining up at the festival venue early and rushing to the most popular stalls when the fair opened at 10am. A total of 96,000 people visited the festival on its opening day, similar to the opening day figure for last year and an increase from the 75,000 in 2013, according to the organizer, the Taipei-based Chinese Animation and Comic Publishers Association. Some fans had been waiting in line for as long as one month. About 60 exhibitors are taking part in the festival, now in its third year. Organizers said they hope it will attract 400,000 visitors this year. The festival runs through Sunday at the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
Chinese entrepreneur Frank Gao used to spend long hours running his social media accounts but now outsources the chore to artificial intelligence (AI) agent tool OpenClaw, which is taking China by storm despite official warnings over cybersecurity. OpenClaw, created in November by an Austrian coder, differs from bots such as ChatGPT because it can execute real-life tasks such as sending e-mails, organizing files or even booking flight tickets. “Since January, I’ve spent hours on the lobster every day,” Gao said in an interview, referring to OpenClaw’s red crustacean mascot. “We’re family.” After downloading OpenClaw, users connect it to artificial intelligence models of their
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
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