■ Executives indicted
Shinkong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) chairman Eugene Wu (吳東進) and his finacial adviser Wu Tung-hsiung (吳統雄) were indicted yesterday by the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office on suspicion of insider trading, after the collapsed merger between Shinkong Financial and Taishin Financial Holdings Co (台新金控) in 2002. The two companies announced on June 25, 2002, that they would merge in a share swap deal. But to facilitate the deal, Taishin had asked Shinkong to set aside an additional NT$19.6 billion to cover potential losses stemming from higher insurance policy claims. Because of the additional provision, Shinkong later decided to report an after-tax loss of NT$8.82 billion instead of an earlier forecast of NT$3.96 billion profit that year, which angering Taishin, which called off the merger on July 3 the same year. Prosecutors accused Eugene Wu and Wu Tung-hsiung of insider trading of stocks, as they allegedly sold the Shinkong shares they owned two weeks before the announcement of revised financial forecast. Taishin chairman Thomas Wu (吳東亮) is the younger brother of Eugene Wu.
■ CAL, Delta share codes
Taiwan's leading carrier China Airlines (CAL, 華航) said yesterday it will expand code-sharing services with US-based Delta Air Lines starting Monday. CAL will add three additional code-sharing destinations on Delta flights from Los Angeles to Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa while Delta will place its codes on CAL flights from Taipei to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, it said. The new services will allow passengers to fly to Atlanta, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa via Los Angeles, or from San Francisco to Atlanta, or from Honolulu to Los Angeles and San Francisco. CAL will operate 13 destinations in the US after the expanded code-sharing. Meanwhile, Delta will place its codes on CAL flights from Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York (JFK), San Francisco and Seattle to Taipei, and onward to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.
■ E-mail filter launched
New e-mail filtering software developed by two domestic universities was launched yesterday, with its creators claiming it can filter some 97 percent of junk mails, the National Chung Cheng University (NCCU) announced. According to Kuo Yao-huang (郭耀煌), the software, dubbed "Nopam, " was jointly developed by NCCU and National Tsinghua University, and can handle more than 1 million e-mails in Intel Pentium 4 computers per day, with the error margin of less than 0.01 percent. This software will be offered to various schools or academic sectors of the country for free, Kuo said, adding that he is proud of the achievement. NCCU Professor Lee Hsing-lin (李新林) noted that the research and development of computer software is quite difficult in Taiwan, as few entrepreneurs are willing to dedicate themselves to this area, and therefore it needs long-term efforts. Wu Sheng (吳昇), director of NCCU's Internet center, said some junk mails are disguised in different versions to elude e-mail filtering software, but Nopam can compare the sources, contents, titles, the similarity, or whether they are sent in quantities to find these junk mails.
■ NT dollar gains
The New Taiwan dollar continued gaining ground against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.013 to close at NT$31.892 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$597 million, down from US$753 million the previous day.
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
On Ireland’s blustery western seaboard, researchers are gleefully flying giant kites — not for fun, but in the hope of generating renewable electricity and sparking a “revolution” in wind energy. “We use a kite to capture the wind and a generator at the bottom of it that captures the power,” said Padraic Doherty of Kitepower, the Dutch firm behind the venture. At its test site in operation since September 2023 near the small town of Bangor Erris, the team transports the vast 60-square-meter kite from a hangar across the lunar-like bogland to a generator. The kite is then attached by a
Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準精密), a metal casing supplier owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday announced plans to invest US$1 billion in the US over the next decade as part of its business transformation strategy. The Apple Inc supplier said in a statement that its board approved the investment on Thursday, as part of a transformation strategy focused on precision mold development, smart manufacturing, robotics and advanced automation. The strategy would have a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), the company added. The company said it aims to build a flexible, intelligent production ecosystem to boost competitiveness and sustainability. Foxconn
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
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