Kaohsiung in free-trade port bid
Kaohsiung Port will file its official application for free-trade port status today, said Huang Ching-tern (黃清藤), director of the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau, yesterday.
"I believe Kaohsiung Port is qualified to be transformed into a free-trade port in terms of its location, equipment and operation system," he said. "If we obtain the approval this time, we can start to invite companies to open operation offices here as early as next year."
Kaohsiung Port is the first of the free-trade port candidates such as CKS International Airport, Keelung Port and Taichung Port to file an application since the legislature passed the Statue Governing the Establishment and Management of Free Trade Ports (自由貿易港區置及管理條例) on July 10.
Chunghwa Picture selling stock
Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), the nation's third-largest maker of flat-panel displays, is selling as much as US$230 million of new shares to overseas inves-tors, an ABN Amro Rothschild banker said.
The company is offering 500 million shares in the form of 20 million global depositary receipts (GDRs) for between US$10.93 and US$11.53 each, the banker said.
That represents a discount of between 5 percent and 10 percent to yesterday's NT$16.4 share price.
ABN Amro and Citigroup Inc. are managing the sale.
Chunghwa Picture on Sept. 24 cut its pretax loss forecast for this year by more than four-fifths after demand improved. The company expects to post a loss of NT$648 million (US$19.2 million), down from an earlier forecast of NT$3.8 billion. The company has posted losses for the past two years.
New IC-ATM cards launched
E. Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行),Cosmos Bank (萬泰銀行) and 11 other banks yesterday launched new integrated-circuit (IC) automated-teller machine (ATM) cards to ensure transaction security.
At the launch ceremony, Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (林全) said the ministry hopes to complete the IC card plan by the end of next year to solve the problem of illegal copying of banking data.
Normal ATM cards are easy to duplicate by copying the magnetic strips embedded in the cards, while IC cards' multiple encryption systems make them extremely difficult to copy, the ministry said in a written statement.
Trust certificates rated
Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評), the local branch of Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, said yesterday that it had assigned a "twAA" rating to NT$5.8 billion in senior certificates issued by the special purpose trust for securitization of corporate loans originated by Credit Lyon-nais' Taipei branch.
Taiwan Ratings also assigned "twA," "twBBB" and "twBBB-" ratings to three other certificates issued by the trust, it said in a statement. The four certificates, totaling NT$7.2 billion are backed by a portfolio of 17 NT dollar-denominated corporate bank loans, it said.
"The successful placement of the transaction reinforces our belief that the Taiwan securitization market is rapidly becoming a sophisticated issuer and investment market," the company said.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar rose yesterday against its US counterpart after the TAIEX climbed, fanning trader speculation the abolition of limits on investment from abroad will draw more overseas funds.
The NT dollar rose NT$0.042, or 0.1 percent, to close at NT$33.768 at the Taipei foreign exchange mar-ket. Turnover was US$445 million.
``Taiwan's scrapping of limits on overseas investment begins today so, in the medium to longer-term, global investors may raise demand for stocks,'' Chiou Fu-Nong, a currency trader at United World Chi-nese Commercial Bank (世華銀行), said yesterday.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last