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■ Foreign investors buy stocks
Overseas investors yesterday made net purchases of stocks for the first time in a month, as some fund managers said that stock markets have already priced in higher oil prices. Overseas investors bought a net NT$80.3 million (US$2.4 million) of stocks today, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, making yesterday the first day since April 26 that overseas buying exceeded overseas selling. Since that date, overseas investors had made transactions resulting in a net load-off totaling about US$3.8 billion. "Foreign funds became net buyers today because the US and European markets have stabilized and oil prices fell," said Kevin Lin, a fund manager at Shinkong Investment Trust Co (新光投信). The TAIEX rose 3.3 percent last week, its first weekly gain in five weeks. Today, it dropped 0.4 percent to 5942.08. Crude oil futures fell for a third day after Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, assured the US government that it would raise petroleum production to meet rising demand.

■ Yang Ming receives ship
Yang Ming Marine Transportation Corp (陽明海運) has increased its cargo fleet as China Shipbuilding Corp (中船) delivered another container ship to the company yesterday. China Shipbuilding president Fan Kuang-nan (范光男) and Yang Ming president Huang Wan-hsiu (黃望修) presided over the delivery ceremony at China Shipbuilding's Kaohsiung wharf. Fan said that this was the fourth of five container ships ordered by Yang Ming. Construction on the ship began last July, and the ship was delivered one month ahead of schedule. The ship is 263m long, 40m wide and 24m high, with a drought of 14m when fully loaded. The new container ship comes equipped with a state-of-the-art satellite guidance system and an automatic navigation system.

■ HP to offer new phone
In the second half of this year, Hewlett-Packard Co will bring to market a mobile phone that offers handheld computer functions, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information. Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦) will make the phones, which are to use an operating system developed by Microsoft Corp, the paper said. The phones, which will be based on the dominant global system for mobile communications, known as GSM, will also be equipped to link with the Internet via wireless connections on a local area network, the paper said. Hewlett-Packard has embarked on a project to broaden its line of handheld computers, the newspaper said.

■ Phone deal for Hon Hai
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) will make mobile phones for Nokia Oyj for the first time because the world's largest handset company is aiming to regain market share by offering a line of low-cost phones, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information. Hon Hai will make phones with black-and-white screens based on the code-division multiple-access standard and will introduce the phones in the Indian market by July, the report said. Nokia is counting on CDMA handsets and entering the Indian market to help it gain more than 30 percent share of the market, the paper said.

■ NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar moved down against its US counterpart yesterday, declining NT$0.039 to close at NT$33.588 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$497 million.

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