REAL ESTATE
TFCC replaces its president
Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓), which owns Taipei 101, yesterday approved the replacement of its president, Chen Shih-ming (陳世明), with Angela Chang (張振亞). The firm attributed the management reshuffle to business needs. The change is to take effect today, the company said. Chang earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from National Taiwan University and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University, it said, adding that she held top positions at Johnson & Johnson Taiwan and numerous charitable organizations, including President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) Thinking Taiwan Foundation.
PLASTICS
FPG boosts raise with bonus
Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) yesterday said it plans to issue an additional one-time bonus of NT$4,000 (US$131) to its employees to beef up a wage hike. The bonus would increase the corporation’s wage hike to an average of 4.63 percent, from 4 percent decided on Monday after negotiations with representatives of workers’ unions, FPG said. The 4 percent hike, which is to take effect from this month, represents an average increase per worker of NT$2,100 per month.
INTERNET
Google caters to motorbikes
Google yesterday launched a new map service for motorbike riders in Taiwan that will help them plan their routes and calculate their travel time. The firm launched two-wheel navigation mode in December last year, with Taiwan becoming the fourth nation to receive the service after India, Indonesia and Malaysia, Google said. Users need mobile devices powered by Android 4.4 or newer versions of the operating system to be able to use the new service, it said.
AIRLINES
EVA ranked world’s fifth-best
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) has been ranked fifth by Skytrax in this year’s World’s Best Airlines list, up one notch from last year. EVA took World’s Best Airport Services honors and was named as one of this year’s five-star airlines, Skytrax’s Web site showed. Singapore Airlines Ltd was ranked the best airline, followed by Qatar Airways Ltd, All Nippon Airways Co and Emirates, the Web site showed.
SECURITIES
Profit plunges 30.57 percent
Securities companies operating in Taiwan have reported a 30.57 percent month-on-month decline in profit to NT$3.53 billion for last month due to volatility on the local equity market. However, the figure was a 39.67 percent increase from the same period last year, data compiled by the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) last week showed. Securities firms’ proprietary trading operations saw a decline of NT$3.23 billion in net profit from a month earlier, while their underwriting businesses posted a drop of NT$20 million in earnings, TWSE said.
? EQUITIES
HKEX eyes links expansion
Chinese investors would eventually be able to buy stocks with weighted voting rights, such as Xiaomi Corp (小米), through links with Hong Kong, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd (HKEX) said in a statement yesterday, days after China’s bourses barred such companies from the cross-border trading program. HKEX said it on Tuesday reached an agreement with the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses to set up a working group to form rules on the new adjustment as soon as possible. It did not provide details on the timing.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
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