Business Briefs

Chen urges investment
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) urged business leaders yesterday to make domestic investment their top priority and said that Taiwan's businesses should make the nation their base of operations.

Chen made the remarks when he attended a regular monthly meeting of the "3-3 Society," a local businessman's group.

Chen said that although the society represents only 48 business groups, their combined annual revenue exceeds US$200 billion, or more than one half of the nation's GDP.

Chen said the country must have a global vision if it is to sustain its industrial development.

"Only when Taiwan keeps growing and getting stronger can its businessmen around the world have wider space to maneuver," he added.

Airlines to work together
China Airlines (華航) and Singapore Airlines yesterday agreed to cooperate in engineering maintenance.

China Airlines signed a memorandum of understanding on engineering maintenance cooperation with SIA Engineering Co, a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, aiming to enhance the carrier's aircraft maintenance quality and market competitiveness, China Airlines said in a statement yesterday.

Under the agreement, SIA Engineering will second eight senior management staff experienced in engineering maintenance to China Airlines, the carrier said.

Demand will grow for laptops
Customer demand for the new Centrino chip-powered laptops is expected to grow fast in the second half of the year, Gary Lu, chief financial officer of Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦) said at a conference sponsored by Merrill Lynch & Co. Compal is the world's second-largest maker of notebook computers.

Centrino notebooks, which can connect to the Internet using a radio link that's designed into the chip, started selling on March 12.

Compal makes laptop computers for the world's largest PC vendors, including Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Computer Corp, Toshiba Corp, International Business Machines Corp, Fujitsu Ltd, Acer Inc, Sony Corp, NEC Corp, and Apple Computer Inc.

South China, EnTrust to merge
The Hua Nan Financial Holding Co (華南金控) announced yesterday that it will merge South China Insurance Co (華南保險) and EnTrust Investment Trust Corp (永昌證券) through a share swapping arrangement.

The company said its board directors have agreed to use one share of Hua Nan Financial to trade 1.1794 share of South China Insurance and 0.3737 share of EnTrust, respectively, the company said in a statement.

The acquisitions will increase the holding company's capital by NT$2.5 billion to NT$47.29 billion, and enhance its assets to NT$1.352 trillion.

Cheng Kung hosts job fair
An employment exposition is scheduled to be held at the National Cheng Kung University March 21 to March 23, with more than 11,500 job opportunities up for grabs, organizers said Tuesday.

The exposition will be divided into two parts: talent recruitment activities slated for March 21 to March 23 and a corporate introduction showcase slated for March 23, the organizers said.

A total of 116 local companies, including will be present at the exposition, the organizers added.

NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday continued to lose ground against its US counterpart, dropping NT$0.050 to close at NT$34.780 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.

Turnover was US$530 million, compared with the previous day's US$430 million.