Steel exports booming
Steel exports have been growing every year and topped the imports since 1996 to account for 6.5 percent of total outbound shipments last year, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported.
DGBAS officials attributed the industry's boom in recent years to strong demand from China and the whole world. It made the third-largest contribution in terms of output value to the manufacturing sector only after those registered by the electronics and the petroleum industries.
Nevertheless, more and more domestic steel makers are considering relocating to the mainland in the face of higher labor costs and tighter restrictions on greenhouse emissions, they said.
SinoPac stake to cost US$2bn
Foreign investors seeking to buy a majority stake in SinoPac Finan-cial Holdings Co (建華金控) will have to pay about US$2 billion, a Chinese-language business daily reported, citing SinoPac president Paul Lo (盧正昕).
Foreign investors will have to pay at least NT$27 to NT$28 per share, or about two times Sino-Pac's net asset value, the paper said, citing Lo. SinoPac is still seeking partners, he added.
Formosa Plastics buys land
Formosa Plastics Group (台塑) has agreed to buy 150 hectares of industrial land in China's Jiangsu Province to set up a textile production zone, a Chinese-language newspaper reported here, citing Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞) vice president Wu Chia-chao (吳嘉昭).
The project will have annual production capacity of 181,437 tonnes of artificial fibers, about half the company's domestic capacity, the paper said. The report didn't say how much the group plans to invest in the project.
Chinatrust ratings raised
Standard & Poor's Ratings Ser-vices said yesterday that it has raised its long-term credit rating on Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託銀行) to "BBB+" from "BBB" and its short-term rating to "A-2" from "A-3."
At the same time the long-term rating on Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) was raised to "BBB" from "BBB-" while the short-term rating remained unchanged at "A-3," S&P said in a statement.
Outlooks for both Chinatrust bank and its parent holding company remain stable, it added.
"Concerns that asset quality would be negatively impacted by the acquisition of Grand Commercial Bank (萬通銀行) by the bank in 2003 did not materialize to the extend feared," S&P's credit analyst Iris Chan said.
"Conversely, Chinatrust bank's management has been able to significantly write down problem assets while sustaining good operating profitability, as measured before loan loss provisioning," she said.
HannStar raises US$140m
HannStar Display Corp (瀚宇彩晶), a maker of flat-panel displays for personal computers, said yesterday that it raised US$140 million selling five-year bonds convertible into its shares.
The Taoyuan-based company sold the zero-coupon bonds, which can be converted into shares at NT$11.28 a share, at a premium of 15 percent to the stock's closing price of NT$9.80 today, it said in a statement.
The bonds are callable after 20 months.
HannStar Display is selling the bonds to help finance the construction of a new flat-panel plant, it said in July.
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar Tuesday turned weak against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.017 to close at NT$32.819 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$556 million.
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
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