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■ Mega has plans for Wall Street
Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), the nation's second-largest financial company by assets, said it plans to list on the US stock market in 2008. "The plan will help increase our investor base," Mega executive vice president Joseph Shieh (謝劍平) said yesterday. "It's a trend for a major Taiwanese company to comply with international standards in both accounting and corporate governance." As of last Friday, overseas investors held 20.8 percent of Mega, according to statistics released by the Web site of the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

■ New virus torments Microsoft
Anti-virus software maker Trend Micro Inc yesterday issued a virus alert to WORM_ZOTOB.A, which has damaged hundreds of computers in the US and Germany and may soon attack Asia, the company said in a statement. The memory-resident worm takes advantage of the Microsoft Windows Plug and Play vulnerability that Microsoft Corp announced last week to propagate across networks. Windows Operating System 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP are targets of the attack, it said. The worm scans Internet protocol addresses for vulnerable machines. Once it detects an unpatched system, it drops a script that downloads a copy of the worm and installs a backdoor that enables remote malicious users to steal data, or further attack other computers, Trend Micro said. The company suggested users apply the patches provided by Microsoft and update anti-virus software codes to prevent infection.

■ Task force eyes foreign funds
The Financial Supervisory Com-mission has set up a task force to monitor TAIEX index futures and prevent overseas funds from manipulating them, a Chinese-language newspaper said yesterday. The regulator said the foreign funds have tried to put downward pressure on Taiwan index futures prices in their monthly closings to try to increase profits, the newspaper said.

■ Intel invests in China
Intel Corp, the world's largest computer-chip maker, said its US$200 million China Technology Fund invested in three Chinese companies, two months after the fund was announced. Intel invested in Chipsbrand Microelectronics (HK) Co, which designs semiconductors; Onewave Technologies Inc, a maker of equipment for Internet television; and VeriSilicon Holdings Co, which offers design services to chip companies. Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel, set up the China fund to help strengthen its position in the world's second-largest computer market. PC sales in China rose 20 percent by units in the second quarter, researcher IDC said.

■ China FDI falls, pledges rise
Foreign direct investment in China fell 3.4 percent in the first seven months of this year, compared with the same period last year, to US$33.1 billion, China's Ministry of Commerce reported yesterday. However, pledged foreign direct investment in the January-July period rose 19.2 percent from a year earlier, to US$98.6 billion, the ministry said. China attracted US$60.6 billion in foreign investment last year, up 13 percent from 2003, second only to the US. The top sources of foreign investment were Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, the US, Taiwan, Singapore and Germany.

■ NT dollar drops
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart on foreign fund outflows after the nation's stock market closed down 1.67 percent. It declined NT$0.074 to close at NT$31.966 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$732 million.

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