Business Briefs

Grundig purchase stuck by debt

Sampo Corp (聲寶), the nation's largest consumer electronics maker, said its planned purchase of German television maker Grundig AG may fail, the Financial Times Deutschland reported.

Negotiations may be revived "after Grundig has solved its financial problems," Sampo chairman Felix Chen (陳盛沺) said at the opening of an industry fair in Taipei, according to the newspaper.

Sampo isn't ready to pay 200 million euros (US$218 million) for Grundig's pension liabilities as well as an outstanding 45 million-euro loan for capital equipment, the newspaper said.

Sampo said in January that it planned to pay less than 100 million euros to buy four-fifths of Nuremberg, Germany-based Grundig.

Trade with China soars

Cross-strait trade rose 36.9 percent to a record US$41.01 billion last year with Taiwan posting a trade surplus of US$25.11 billion, the government said yesterday.

Exports to China totalled US$33.06 billion last year, up 37.4 percent. Imports grew 34.7 percent to US$7.95 billion, according to figures released by the Board of Foreign Trade.

Last year, China absorbed 25.3 percent of the nation's total exports of US$130.6 billion and provided 7.1 percent of its total imports of US$112.6 billion.

Powerchip makes chip deal

Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the country's third-largest maker of computer memory chips, said it will sell about a third of its production from its newest chip plant this year to Elpida Memory Inc, a venture between NEC Corp and Hitachi Ltd.

"We will start shipments to Elpida from April 1," said Powerchip spokesman Eric Tang (譚仲明).

Powerchip expects to ship about 30 percent of the 80 million 256-megabit memory chips it makes this year to Elpida, Tang said.

The sale of a 1 percent stake in Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) fizzled for a second day after the government sold 18,000 of about 99 million shares in the phone company on offer.

The government, which sold only 1 percent or about 1 million shares Monday, kept the minimum NT$52 price in the three-day sale, aiming to raise NT$5.2 billion (US$150 million).

In today's sale, the government sold shares for an average NT$52.05.

There were 816 bids for a combined 35.7 million shares, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said. The highest bid was NT$53.

Taishin predicts big gains

Taishin Financial Holdings Co (台新金控), owner of the country's second-largest credit-card issuer, said it expects net income this year of NT$7.23 billion, a 45 percent gain from NT$5 billion last year, based on consolidated numbers that include earnings from the brokerage and lending units.

Earnings growth this year will come from consumer finance and brokerage business, chief financial officer Carol Lai (賴昭吟) said at an investors' meeting yesterday.

Taishin Financial has also been approached by foreign insurance companies to discuss forming a joint venture to sell insurance policies, chief operation officer Steve Shieh (謝壽夫) said.

NT dollar rises

The New Taiwan dollar closed at its highest in a month against its US counterpart yesterday, rising NT$0.097, or 0.3 percent, to close at NT$34.662 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Trading totaled US$526 million, compared with the previous day's US$257 million.

The local unit's gain accelerated after it rose past NT$34.73, triggering automatic orders to buy, a currency trader at Grand Commercial Bank (萬通銀行) in Taipei.