Joint venture wins rail project
A joint venture between Australian construction company Barclay Mowlem Rail Group and Teco Electric and Machinery Co (東元電機) secured a NT$3.3 billion contract to build the Tsoying Depot in southern Taiwan for the Taiwan High Speed Rail project, statements from both companies said yesterday.
The Tsoying Depot is expected to carry out routine inspections and service rolling stock for the new high-speed railway link between Taipei and Kaohsiung, which is scheduled to open in 2005.
The joint venture will construct 31 structures on the 40-hectare Tsoying site, including ballasted track rail sidings, rail storage areas and signaling facilities, and large steel-framed portal constructions and workshops.
China Airlines adding flights
China Airlines Co (華航) plans to add flights to Honolulu and Frankfurt to meet an increase in demand as the SARS epidemic subsides.
The carrier will add two flights a week to Honolulu from Taipei starting next Thursday, boosting the number to seven a week, public relations specialist Joseph Wu (武志厚) said. The airlines will also add a fourth weekly flight to Frankfurt starting two days later, he said.
China Airlines' sales fell 13 percent to NT$5.35 billion (US$156 million) last month from a year ago.
Taiwan may pay less for LNG
The state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油) may pay less than US$3 per million British thermal units for liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar, below the average price for the fuel in East Asia, Tex Report's Daily Energy edition said, without saying where it obtained the information.
The price to be paid by Chinese Petroleum for LNG from Qatar's Ras Laffan venture was based on an assumed oil price of US$20 per barrel, Tex said. LNG prices are typically set by a formula that's linked to benchmark oil prices.
Japanese buyers now pay an average US$3.80 per million British thermal units for LNG, based on the same assumed oil price, Tex said.
Chinese Petroleum last week won a NT$298.2 billion (US$8.7 billion) contract to supply the LNG bought from Qatar to Taiwan Power Co (台電) for 25 years starting in 2008.
DoCoMo urges share swap
NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan's top mobile operator, wants its Taiwanese unit, KG Telecommunications Co (和信電訊), to swap shares with bigger rival Far EasTone Telecom-munications Co (遠傳電信) instead of cash for a merger to avoid losses, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without citing its sources.
The paper said Far EasTone chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) has a tentative agreement with NTT DoCoMo to swap shares, adding that Far EasTone's offer of NT$12 a share for KG Telecom would lead to losses on NTT DoCoMo's investment in KG Telecom.
Yang to quit bank job
Yang Tze-kaing (楊子江), who has been appointed vice minister of Finance, will quit his presidency at the China Development Industrial Bank (CDIB, 中華開發工銀) to take up his new job next Wednesday, the lender's parent company China Development Financial Holding Co (中華開發金控) said yesterday in a statement.
To replace Yang, the board of China Development Financial yesterday appointed Benny Hu (胡定吾), CDIB's chairman, to double as the bank's president.
NT dollar continues gains
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday continued its strength against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.009 to close at NT$34.341 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$1.054 billion.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) shares yesterday notched their best two-day rally on record, as investors flock to the Taiwanese chip designer on excitement over its tie-up with Google. The Taipei-listed stock jumped 8.59 percent, capping a two-session surge of 19 percent and closing at a fresh all-time high of NT$1,770. That extended a two-month rally on growing awareness of MediaTek’s work on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs), which are chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. It also highlights how fund managers faced with single-stock limits on their holding of market titan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are diversifying into other AI-related firms.
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