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■ Geant starts price war
Far Eastern Geant (愛買吉安), the nation's third-largest hypermarket chain operator, plans to take a NT$300 million (US$9.4 million) cut in profits per year to slash retail prices on 2,000 items in hopes of creating an unrivaled discount-store image. The long-term marketing campaign will start today in its 13 outlets nationwide on top of the regular sales promotions in celebration of festivities, such as the annual Mid-Autumn Festival, Lunar New Year holiday and the Dragon Boat Festival. To mark its 15th anniversary next month, Far Eastern Geant is kicking off a two-week promotion, company president Pascal Billaud (畢尤) told a press briefing yesterday. The company is scheduled to open its 14th outlet in Taipei City's Dazhi district in December, with an imaginative concept introduced to boost its edge, he said without elaborating.

■ Current account narrows
The nation's current-account surplus, the broadest measure of the flow of goods and services, narrowed in the second quarter to US$1.71 billion from a revised US$5.54 billion a year earlier, the central bank said in a statement in Taipei yesterday. The financial account, which measures investment flows, showed a surplus of US$2.46 billion after a revised US$844 million deficit in the same period of last year. Direct investment showed a net outflow of US$809 million and portfolio investment had a net inflow of US$1.38 billion, it said. For the first quarter, Taiwan had a revised US$4.41 billion current-account surplus, the bank said.

■ New boss for Cathay Financial
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), the country's biggest financial-services company, said its board appointed Huang Diao-kui (黃調貴), president of its flagship Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽), as its new president, effective Aug. 21. Huang, 56, will replace Tung Cheng-cheng (董成城), who is retiring, Cathay Financial said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Cathay Life is the nation's largest life insurer. "The appointment will become official after winning approval by the Financial Supervisory Commission," the statement said, without giving more details. Huang joined the life insurer in 1973.

■ AU Optronics denies report
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the world's third-largest maker of liquid-crystal displays for computers and TVs, denied a report the company cut its shipment target for this year for small- and medium-sized panels by a fifth. "The report is speculative and is not true," the company's public relation specialist Hsiao Ya-wen (蕭雅文) said. AU Optronics cut its target for this year's shipments of the displays by 20 percent to 55 million units because mobile-phone makers postponed orders, a Chinese-language newspaper reported earlier, citing executive vice president Lu Po-yen (盧博彥). Hsiao reiterated the company's forecast that third-quarter shipments of larger screens will rise 10 percent from the second quarter, and small- and medium-sized panels will gain 20 percent. In the three months ended June 30, the company said it shipped 7 million larger-sized panels and 11.8 million small- and medium-sized panels.

■ NT dollar dips
The New Taiwan dollar remained weak against its US counterpart yesterday, declining NT$0.075 to close at NT$32.189 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$798 million, up from US$762 million the previous day.

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