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■ Notebooks sales hit record
Taiwanese shipments of notebook PCs hit a record in the fourth quarter of last year, growing 68.4 percent from the same period in 2002, and 28.3 on the previous quarter, to reach 8.2 million units. Holiday demand and replacement of desktop PCs with notebooks were the main growth drivers, the Market Intelligence Center (市場情報中心) said in a statement yesterday.
Component shortages have arrested the decline in notebook prices, the center said.
The component shortages are especially severe for liquid crystal displays, hard disk drives and batteries, it said.
In the first quarter of this year, given low seasonal demand and reduced working days because of the Lunar New Year, shipments are expected to decline 8.9 percent on the previous quarter.
"As the industry moves into the weaker retail season, the tight supply situation will likely be relieved, which will be beneficial in ensuring steady shipment volume," it said.

■ Fruit going overseas
Kaohsiung County is making progress in finding overseas markets for its fruit through the efforts of the county government, fruit growers and trading companies, agricultural sources said yesterday.
Kaohsiung County exported 87,000 tonnes of bananas, guavas, mangos, lichees, dates, papayas and bell fruit, among others, the sources said.
Major overseas markets for Kaohsiung County fruits included Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, the US and Shanghai.
Last month, Kaohsiung County exported 70 tonnes of guavas to Canada, stimulating a rise in the domestic retail price of the fruit. Market sources said the price of guavas has risen from NT$8 per kilogram to NT$20 in the past two weeks, while the retail price of high quality guavas has surged to NT$30.
Kaohsiung County is a major guava production base, with more than 3,000 hectares of guava orchards turning out about 90,000 tonnes of guavas a year.

■ JPMorgan makes appointment
JPMorgan Chase Bank yesterday announced the appointment of Carl Chien (錢國維) as senior country officer for Taiwan. The position had been held for the past five years by Andrew Kuo (郭明鑑), who will continue to be the senior country officer for Hong Kong.
Chien was the company's Taiwan managing director and general manager before this appointment. Under Chien's leadership, JPMorgan ranked No. 2 in equity and equity-linked issuances for Taiwanese corporations at the end of last year. He also led the investment banking team in advising and executing some of the most notable and successful mergers and acquisitions.

■ Polaris to raise stake
Polaris Group (寶來) plans to raise its stake in Bank of Overseas Chinese (華僑銀行) to become the largest private shareholder in the loss-making lender, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information.
Polaris now holds a 7.38 percent stake and wants to take over control of the bank, the paper said. Polaris owns one of the nation's largest brokerages.
Bank of Overseas Chinese last year forecast it would make a net loss of NT$1.6 billion (US$48 million) after writing off bad loans, the paper said. The lender had a bad-loan ratio of about 10 percent at the end of last year, the report said.

■ NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.015 to close at NT$33.288 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$716 million.

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