Randomly Noted

With Singapore’s StarHub announcing it will soon offer an Android-powered phone from Google by way of Taiwan’s HTC Corp., I decided to find out what this is all about. With a 10-year-old Star Wars-and-Lego-obsessed son, I figured anything with “android” in the name would soon become fodder for dinner-table chit-chat. A few Google searches and I’m immersed in the world of mobility, Linux, “cupcakes,” “eclairs” and Marissa Mayer, who apparently adores cupcakes (the fattening ones) and, by the way, is a high-level engineering executive at Google. (All this by way of the web, so hopefully reliable information.) This disclosure of my ignorance of hot new mobile gadgets is just a segue into the topic of Taiwan’s economy. Today’s MSCI index rejig recognizes the island-nation’s recent share price surge. Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All Country World Index will rise to 1.41% from 1.3% at the end of May. It’s the biggest increase for any Asia-Pacific market in the index and could pump about NT$15 billion of additional investment in Taiwan’s stock market, DJN reports, citing Fubon Financial’s Joyce Chang. That’s because exchange-traded funds the world over that track the index will pour proportionately more money into Taiwanese shares. Taiwan’s relative out-performance reflects “an influx of money from investors seeking to capitalize on improving relations between Taiwan and China,” write DJN’s Perris  Lee Choon Siong and Jessie Ho.