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Finance reforms protested
Thousands of people from grassroots financial institutions yesterday staged several protests in front of local governments, including Taipei County, Hsinchu County and Penghu County, to voice their opposition to the Ministry of Finance's new rules to restrict future lending by the credit units of farmers' and fishermen's associations.

Protesters reiterated that the ministry's move has threatened their survival and aims to force the associations out of the market.

In response, Tsai Ching-nian (蔡慶年), deputy director general of the ministry's Bureau of Monetary Affairs, said the government would continue with its plans to reform community-level financial institutions.

Without elaborating, Tsai said that some adjustments would be made to the ministry's previous three-tier risk-management mechanism. He also said that the ministry will hold talks with protesters and leaders of local credit cooperatives about their planned demonstration in Taipei on Nov. 23.

Nokia wins Chunghwa contract
Nokia Oyj won a NT$12 billion (US$345 million) contract from Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan's biggest phone company, to supply equipment for a network that will provide cellular users faster access to the Internet.

The world's biggest mobile-phone maker will supply equipment and labor for the first stage of a network for so-called third-generation services, Chunghwa Telecom said in a statement to the Taiwan stock exchange yesterday.

Wellcome owner buys Ikea
Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd, which owns retailers across Asia, will buy the Hong Kong and Taiwan stores of Ikea from a unit of parent Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd. for US$27 million.

Ikea has four outlets in Hong Kong and one in Taipei, all operated as a franchise by Jardine Pacific Holdings Ltd.

Dairy Farm owns Wellcome supermarkets and Mannings drugstores in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Foodworld in India, and Giant hypermarkets in Malaysia, Singapore and India.

Banks get Chinese license
China's central bank will license Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中信銀), Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) and First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) to set up offices in China, the China Business Times reported, citing Li Jianguo, vice director of the central bank's Taiwan office.

The three banks will be able to set up representative offices in Beijing and Shanghai, the paper said, without indicating when formal approval will come.

Representative offices are allowed to gather information, liaise with Chinese and Taiwanese businesses and officials and conduct market research, but they can't lend money or take deposits.

Sales fall at Macronix
Macronix International Co (旺宏電子), Taiwan's biggest maker of memory chips for electronic games, had its fourth quarterly loss in a row as sales declined.

Macronix turned to a third-quarter net loss of NT$2.1 billion (US$60 million) from net income of NT$39.1 million a year ago. Sales, reported earlier, fell to NT$4.8 billion from NT$5.1 billion.

NT dollar strengthens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rose against its US counterpart, up NT$0.084 to close at NT$34.815 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.

Turnover was US$349 million, compared with the previous day's US$319 million.
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