CAL unit inks deal with FSI
China Airlines Co (華航) said yesterday that its InterContinental Aerocraft Service (聯成航太) unit has signed a contract with Flight Structure Inc (FSI) of the US to team up to undertake an aircraft freighter conversion business.
The alliance will seek to convert old Boeing 737-300 and 737-400 passenger airplanes into freighters. The aim to convert 120 to 150 aircraft over the next 10 years in a business worth NT$21 billion (US$617.6 million).
InterContinental chairman Liu Ching-yao (劉景耀) and FSI representative Keith Aakre inked the contract in Taoyuan.
FSI is a unit of BE Aerospace, a US-based aircraft components supplier.
InterContinental is a Taiwan-based joint venture equally owned by China Airlines, EVA Airways Corp (長榮), Air Asia (亞洲航空) and Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (漢翔).
Chinatrust's bond sale OK'd
Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託銀行) yesterday said the Ministry of Finance approved its planned NT$5 billion (US$147 million) sale of bonds backed by residential mortgage loans.
The bonds, which will be sold by Deutsche Bank AG in five different classes, will be backed by 2,890 home loans extended to 1,958 borrowers, the company said in a statement.
The bonds will be sold to domestic investors in a private placement by the end of next month. Lehman Brothers Holding Inc is advising the bank on the sale.
The offer is the third collateralized loan obligation since the Industrial Bank of Taiwan (台灣工銀) completed a sale of bonds backed by existing loans in February.
Chinese Petroleum seeks buyer
Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油) said it's seeking a Middle Eastern country to buy shares in the company as the government prepares to reduce its 100 percent stake.
Abu Dhabi, the capital of the federated United Arab Emirates, agreed to buy a 15 percent stake in Chinese Petroleum, a local newspaper reported yesterday.
The company's deputy director of industrial relations, Liao Tsang-long (廖滄龍), however, denied that a stake sale agreement has been concluded.
Company chairman Kuo Chin-tsai (郭進財) addressed potential investors during a visit to the Middle East earlier this month, Liao said. Some countries expressed an interest and are evaluating the opportunity, he said, declining to identify potential bidders.
"We hope to have an investor that can contribute to our refining, production, management and development operations," Liao said.
The government announced in January that it wanted to sell 55.23 percent of the company this year.
Kaohsiung Harbor going deeper
Kaohsiung Harbor plans to build a 16m-deep container terminal to boost its competitiveness, a harbor official said yesterday.
"The No. 6 Container Terminal will have four wharves and can handle 2 million TEUs (20ft equivalent unit) when it is completed in 2009," said Yang Yi-chung, director of the harbor Bureau's Construction Division.
The harbor's five container terminals are only 15m deep.
According to Yang, the project is a build-operate-transfer project, with the government providing NT$1.6 billion (US$47 million) and the private sector raising NT$10 billion (US$294 million).
In 2001, Kaohsiung lost its ranking as the world's No. 3 container port to Busan, South Korea.
NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.005 to close at NT$34.005 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$550 million.
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
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
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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