Come to Taiwan: commission
International corporations invested by Taiwanese businessmen overseas wishing to raise capital from the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) should set up new companies in Taiwan and apply to the Securities and Futures Commission for first listing, a commission official said yesterday.
The official said that Taiwanese-invested companies in China or other countries may also raise capital from the TSE through the issuance of Taiwan Depository Receipts (TDRs), under the condition that they are already first-listed companies in the following 16 stock exchanges -- namely the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) , NASDAQ, London, Frankfurt, Pan-Europe in Paris and Amsterdam, Italy, Toronto, Australia, Tokyo, Osaka, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Thailand and Johannesburg.
Companies listed on the stock exchange of Hong Kong are not entitled to the "secondary listing" practice, however, due to the complications involving companies with Chinese capital.
Factory closures double
The number of factory closures almost doubled in the first seven months of this year as local companies shift production to China, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement yesterday.
Between January and last month, factory closures rose to 3,361 from 1,865 a year earlier, with closures more than quadrupling to 1,228 in July alone, the ministry said.
Taiwanese companies' investment in China rose almost a third in the first seven months of this year, the ministry said last week.
Meanwhile, new factory registrations in Taiwan rose 7.7 percent to 478 last month from 444 a year earlier. In the first seven months, factory openings climbed 14 percent to 2,723 from 2,391.
Phone-sex firms look to China
Cheap labour costs in China is said to have taken away even the jobs of Taiwanese phone sex operators, a Chinese-language newspaper said yesterday.
Several dozen telephone pornographic companies have extended their operations to China by hiring Chinese women to do the job, the newspaper said.
The paper said that hiring a Taiwanese woman costs between NT$20,000 and NT$30,000 (US$571 and US$857) a month, but it cost just NT$3,000 to hire a Chinese hostess.
A recent raid at a company which operates a porn phone hot line showed that the owner hired more than 200 Chinese women in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen to answer calls from Taiwan.
Depositories sign memorandum
Executives of the Taiwan Securities Central Depository Co. (TSCD) and the New York-based Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. (DTCC) signed a memorandum of understanding in New York on Monday for the exchange of information on clearance and settlement services for equities, bonds and securities.
A TSCD spokesman said the company will send two groups of its staff to New York next month to receive clearance services training at DTCC headquarters.
Bank lending increases
Taiwan bank lending rose in July for a third straight month, according to statistics provided by the nation's central bank.
Total loans by 405 financial institutions -- including the central bank, domestic banks, foreign bank branches, credit cooperatives and others -- rose 1.7 percent in July to NT$13.6 trillion from a year ago, the central bank said.
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned weak against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.014 to close at NT$34.194 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$565 million.
AI SPLURGE: The four major US tech companies have lost more than US$950 billion in value since releasing earnings and outlooks, while equipment makers were gaining Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that would reach about US$650 billion this year — a flood of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear within them. The spending planned by Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Microsoft Corp, all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-watermark for capital spending
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
COLLABORATION: Taiwan and the US could jointly find solutions to weaknesses in supply chain resilience for critical materials, focusing on mining and initial refinement Taiwan is likely to purchase rare earths from the US in the future, and is also in talks with Australia and Canada to strengthen global rare earth supply chain security, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. Taiwan and the US last month concluded the sixth Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue, during which both sides signed a joint statement endorsing the principles of the Pax Silica Declaration, pledging to deepen cooperation in areas including critical minerals. At the time, Kung said the two sides would establish working groups to advance cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, critical materials and
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