TAIEX closes lower
Share prices closed 0.29 percent lower yesterday, slipping back on growing doubts the market can breach resistance at the 10-year moving average of around 6,400 points, dealers said.
They said the latest spike in oil prices to record levels raised concerns about the impact on growth and inflation, undercutting investor confidence.
The key electronics sector was under pressure after recent solid gains while the steel sector saw a solid technical rebound.
The TAIEX closed down 18.43 points at 6,278.46, on turnover of NT$74.43 billion (US$2.37 billion).
The electronics sector fell 0.67 percent and financials were down 0.58 percent while steel sector rose 3.28 percent.
Michael Hsu (許派一), a Jih Sun Securities Investment (日盛投信) assistant vice president, said that though buying interest was weak, there was no aggressive selling either.
Chunghwa stake sale delayed
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation's biggest provider of telephone services, said a 17 percent stake of the company owned by the government will not be sold by the end of this month.
"There's no chance the stake sale can be completed by the end of June as the Cabinet targeted," Chunghwa Telecom Chairman Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) said after a shareholders meeting in Taipei yesterday. "We haven't even applied to the local and overseas regulators. We want to take care of the issue of employees' benefits before proceeding to the next step."
There's no concrete timetable for the stake sale, he said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications -- which owns 65 percent of the company -- aimed to sell the stake in June, Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said March 10.
The board of the company on June 15 approved a plan to sell as many as 1.64 billion shares in Chunghwa Telecom to investors abroad in the form of American depositary receipts.
AU Optronics to recruit
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the world's third-largest maker of flat panels, yesterday said it plans to recruit new blood for its next-generation factories to cope with an industrial upswing.
AU said it will need 500 engineers for the new sixth-generation fab in operation and a 7.5-generation fab under construction, as well as another 200 researchers for its technology center.
This is the flat-panel maker's second large-scale talent recruitment this year.
AU plans to arrange interviews with interested college graduates starting on June 25 in Taichung. They will then move north to hold meetings at the company's factory in Lungtan on July 2 and at the company's headquarters in Hsinchu starting on July 16.
Kinpogroup eyes Flextronics
Kinpogroup (金寶) plans to set up a new venture with Flextronics International Ltd. to jointly produce notebook computers and mobile phones, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing an unidentified Kinpogroup official.
The new venture may become the world's largest supplier in notebook computers and mobile phones, the Taipei-based paper said. Kinpogroup's key member, Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), is the world's second-largest notebook computer maker.
NT dollar closes lower
The New Taiwan dollar traded lower against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.071 to close at NT$31.390 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$628 million, down from US$823 million the previous day.
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