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Powerchip's sales up
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體) announced yesterday that its net sales last month were NT$1.22 billion, increasing 30.6 percent from a year earlier, the company said in statement.

For the first five months, the company saw a 9.54 percent drop in net sales to NT$5.45 billion from last year.

Though affected by a nearly 3.2 percent decline in spot price of DRAM chips, the company's sales last month still increased 9 percent from the previous month, because its total shipment grew over 10 percent last month, spokesman Eric Tang (譚仲民) said.

Powerchip, which plans to carry out a trial run on its 12-inch fab this month expects to generate output of 15,000 wafers per month by the fourth quarter, Tang said.

"As the yield status of our 0.13 process has become mature and stable, Powerchip plans to upgrade all of our capacity to 0.13 process in August," the company said.

With regard to its Fab 1, Powerchip said it has maintained a fairly good yield standard for the production of 0.15 process and has increased the foundry ratio to 40 percent. The company expects continued sales growth in the third quarter, triggered by Fab 2's output increase.

AU Optronics says sales fell
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the world's fourth-largest maker of flat-panel displays for personal computers and other electronic products, said sales last month fell 4 percent from a year ago to NT$7.4 billion (US$214 million).

Sales were NT$7.7 billion in the same period a year ago and NT$7.1 billion in April.

Companies in merger talks
China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控) may merge with rival SinoPac Holdings Co (建華金控) by the end of this year, Diana Chen (陳敏薰), the company's acting chairwoman told a press conference yesterday.

Chen said the merger talks are still progressing and the two sides have agreed to ask a third party to appraise the proposed deal.

"We do not rule out the possibility to complete the merger by this year's end," Chen said.

She said the two companies, if the merger proceeds smoothly, will complement each other, with China Development being strong in investment banking and SinoPac having an edge in consumer banking.

E.Sun gets HK license
The Hong Kong Monetary Au-thority (HKMA) announced yesterday that it has granted a full banking license to E. Sun Com-mercial Bank Ltd (玉山銀行).

E. Sun Commercial has been operating in Hong Kong under a restricted license since February last year.

The bank is ranked 18th domestically in terms of tier-one capital and 21st in total assets. Its corresponding world rankings are 414th and 507th, the HKMA said.

With the granting of the license, the number of licensed banks in the territory has increased by seven to 136 and the number of restricted license banks has dropped to 42.

Foreign reserves rise
The nation's foreign currency reserves rose 2.7 percent to a record US$175.2 billion last month from April and up US$13.57 billion from the end of last year, the central bank said yesterday.

The reserves rose last month on the accumulation of interest, the Central Bank of China said in a statement. The reserves are the world's third largest following those of Japan and China.

NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday continued to gain ground against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.022 to close at NT$34.665 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$415 million.
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