■ Banking
Cards may be restricted
Taiwan may restrict banks, which count more than 8 percent of their credit card loans as bad, from issuing new cards, a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday, citing an unidentified Finance Ministry official. The government, in a move to boost supervision of the competitive credit card business, may also give a warning to banks with 3 percent to 5 percent non-performing loans, the paper said. A total of 67.9 million credit cards have been issued on the island of 23 million people. Of those, 36.6 million cards were in circulation as of October, according to the Bureau of Monetary Affairs.
■ Labor
Migrant workers need help
More needs to be done to help China's tens of millions of migrant workers get their overdue wages, a leading politician was quoted as saying by state media yesterday. Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan made the remark in a teleconference Friday as he urged local governments to make sure construction businesses -- a big employer of migrant labor -- do not exploit workers, Xinhua news agency said. Some regions have fallen far behind in their payments and the mechanism coordinating different departments needs to be improved, Xinhua said, quoting Zeng. The issue is particularly urgent because many of China's estimated 94 million migrant workers are planning to go home for the Chinese Lunar New Year Festival later this month. State media reported late last year that China's migrant workers were owed some 100 billion yuan (US$12 billion) in unpaid wages.
■ Securities
BAS facing civil suit
The securities unit of Bank of America Corp (BAS) said Friday that it could be facing civil action from the US Securities and Exchange Commission relating to its trading activities. The Charlotte-based bank said it received notification from the SEC's enforcement division that agency staff is considering recommending civil injunctive action against the bank's securities subsidiary. "The staff has not made a formal enforcement recommendation to the SEC," Bank of America said in a statement. "BAS is cooperating fully with the inquiry and is submitting reasons why it does not believe an action should be brought." The allegations arose out of an SEC inquiry that began more than two years ago into trading activities in the firm's San Francisco office, the bank said.
■ Automobiles
Mazda boosts China stake
Major Japanese automaker Mazda Motor Corp is hoping to grab 5 percent of China's rapidly growing car market by setting up a sales holding company and production firm, a news report said yesterday. Mazda, owned 33.3 percent by US auto giant Ford Motor, is projecting the production and sale of 200,000 vehicles in China by 2007, raising its market share from 3 percent, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. The sales holding company will oversee sales of three passenger vehicles produced by FAW Car Co and FAW Hainan Motor Co, subsidiaries of Mazda's partner the First Auto Work Group Corp, the newspaper said. It will also oversee sales of locally manufactured Mazda vehicles. Mazda and Ford will begin joint production of vehicles by 2007, the paper said, adding that further details of the production firm have not been decided. Mazda and Ford, however, are likely each to take a 25 percent stake in the firm, with Chongqing Changan Automobile Co contributing the remaining capital.
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