Lih Pao Group (麗寶集團), a major construction company, will invest NT$2.5 billion (US$75.23 million) this year in building a hotel and shopping mall at Yamay Recreation World (月眉育樂世界) because the firm is upbeat about economic recovery and increasing numbers of Chinese tourists, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday.
Yamay general manager Chen Chi-hong (陳志鴻) announced the investment on Saturday when the resort, located in Taichung County, celebrated its 10th anniversary and the opening of its Mala Water Park (馬拉灣水上樂園).
Yamay also plans to relaunch its initial public offering (IPO) in 2012 and apply to become a publicly traded company, the paper said.
“Yamay will actively adjust its structure, move toward a multi-purpose leisure and recreational center and solicit gambling operators to set up shop,” Chen was quoted as saying.
Yamay plans to raise about NT$1 billion in capital via the issuance of shares, which Lih Pao Group intended to acquire, Chen said.
Yamay has a registered capital of NT$5.5 billion and a paid-in capital of NT$2.6 billion, he said, adding that it would gradually boost its capital.
Yamay re-elected its board of directors and supervisors at the beginning of this year after the Taichung District Court ruled at the end of last year that Yamay had completed its restructuring. Because Lih Pao holds a 99.98 percent stake in Yamay, Lih Pao chairman Wu Pao-tien (吳寶田) was elected to replace Ever-Fortune Corp (長億集團) chairman Yang Tien-sheng (楊天生) as chairman of Yamay.
Under the new plan, Lih Pao plans to invest NT$1 billion in a 220-room Yamay Fullon Hotel (月眉福容飯店), which is expected to be completed in two years, Chen said.
It will be the 12th hotel operated by Fullon Hotels and Resorts (福容大飯店), an affiliate of Lih Pao, when it is completed.
Aside from the hotel, Lih Pao will invest NT$1.5 billion in a shopping mall, with a space of roughly 17,000 ping (56,000m²) that will include shops, a movie theater and an agricultural product display center.
Lih Pao has been diversifying into the hospitality sector in recent years. Fullon Hotels and Resorts, which was sestablished four years ago, already has five hotels across the country. Fullon plans to open four more hotels in Kenting, Linkou, Hualien and Kaohsiung in two years.
In the next three years, Lih Pao plans to own and operate 16 chain hotels around the nation, with a total of 4,000 rooms, to become the nation’s largest hotel chain operator.
Last December, Lih Pao signed a memorandum of understanding with Australian gaming group Crown Ltd to establish a NT$10 billion casino at Yamay.
It was estimated that 900,000 people visited Yamay last year. After its renovation, Yamay expects to attract 1.2 million visitors this year, up by 30 percent from last year. Yamay’s revenue target this year is around NT$550 million.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
SUBSIDIES: The nominee for commerce secretary indicated the Trump administration wants to put its stamp on the plan, but not unravel it entirely US President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency in charge of a US$52 billion semiconductor subsidy program declined to give it unqualified support, raising questions about the disbursement of funds to companies like Intel Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電). “I can’t say that I can honor something I haven’t read,” Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, said of the binding CHIPS and Science Act awards in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday. “To the extent monies have been disbursed, I would commit to rigorously enforcing documents that have been signed by those companies to make sure we get
UNUSUAL TIMING: The success of DeepSeek has prompted a scramble among its domestic competitors to upgrade their own AI models Chinese technology company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) yesterday released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence (AI) model that it said surpassed the highly acclaimed DeepSeek-V3. The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max’s release, on the first day of the Lunar New Year when most Chinese people are off work and with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas rivals, but also its domestic competition. “Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms ... almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B,” Alibaba’s cloud unit said in
RSS