■ First Financial president quits
First Financial Holding Co (第一金控), which owns the nation's fourth-biggest bank by assets, said Steve Shieh (謝壽夫) quit as the company's president after less than four months in the job.
Shih remains the company's chairman.
Tsai Jer-shyong (蔡哲雄), president of First Financial's First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) unit, is the company's new president, it said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
"This is a division of responsibilities as Shieh will be focused on blueprinting the company's strategy and direction," said Barro Yang, spokesman for First Financial's investor relations department.
"Tsai will concentrate on operational issues," Yang said.
Shieh, the former president of Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控), was named by the Ministry of Finance as chairman of First Financial in August after the former president, Ray Dawn (董瑞彬), and chairman, Jerome Chen (陳建隆), resigned. Shieh assumed both duties, Yang said.
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■ Flat-TV makers' shares slump
Shares of AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and other Taiwanese makers of liquid-crystal displays may extend this quarter's losses amid concern flat-panel televisions won't sell fast enough to keep new plants fully occupied.
"People worry about LCD TVs not being promoted quickly enough," said Simon Chao, who helps manage the equivalent of US$300 million for President Investment Trust Co (統一投信). "I'm worried about oversupply."
Shares of AU Optronics have fallen 4.2 percent this quarter; in the previous two quarters, the stock leaped 136 percent as the company added production lines to boost output of LCD TVs.
Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) is down 15 percent this quarter after climbing 82 percent in the previous two quarters.
For shoppers, the sticking point may be price. Although LCD TVs are about one-quarter cheaper than a year ago they still are three times the cost of the bulky glass-tube TVs they're designed to replace
■ Advanced Semiconductor No. 1
Advanced Semiconductor Engi-
neering Inc (日月光) took over from Amkor Technology as the world's No. 1 chip-packager last month, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing unidentified Ad-vanced Semiconductor officials.
The company, which has been investing in new technology amid a three-year industry slump, has more orders than it can meet from chipmakers that cut spending on equipment used to assemble and test chips, the paper said.
Advanced Semiconductor, the world's second-largest chip packager last year, said sales last month rose 42 percent from a year earlier to NT$3.4 billion (US$100 million) compared with NT$2.4 billion a year ago.
■ Hong Kong IPO raises HK$423m
Chia Hsin Cement Greater China Holding Corp (嘉新水泥中國控股), a unit of Taiwan's Chia Hsin Cement Corp (嘉新水泥), raised about HK$423 million (US$54.5 million) through an initial public offering in Hong Kong.
The unit sold 286 million shares, including 200.2 million new shares and 85.8 million existing shares, it said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The stock, which will starting trading on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong today, was priced at HK$1.48 a share.
Chia Hsin Cement earlier reported net income for the year's first nine months to Sept. 30 rose a half to NT$517 million.
■ NT dollar remains weak
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday remained weak against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.008 to close at NT$34.048 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$403 million.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by