■ ING Antai names manager
ING Antai (ING安泰人壽) yesterday announced that chief executive officer Chan Pi-yao's (陳丕耀) term will expire at the end of this month, and his post will be taken over by John Wylie, regional general manager of ING Asia Pacific, the company said in a press release. Taiwan has become ING Group's second-largest life insurance market in Asia. To strengthen its foothold here with an eye on the potential retirement pension market, the group decided to have Wylie, an expert in pension programs, lead the company to further boost its sales and market share. ING Antai, the nation's fourth-largest life insurer announced last month that its Taiwanese operations will be upgraded from a branch to a subsidiary company of the Hague-based ING Group, starting March 1.
■ New FSC official announced
The Financial Supervisory Commission's secretary-general William Tseng (曾銘宗) will take over as acting director-general of the commission's Examination Bureau, the commission's spokesman Lin Chung-cheng (林忠正) said yesterday. Lee Chin-chen (李進誠), the former director-general of the bureau, was charged last October and may face an eight-year jail sentence for his alleged leaking of confidential information about a government probe into Power Quotient International Co (勁永國際) to an investor who profited from the information.
■ Foreign investment still rising
Foreign investors continued their interest in Taiwan's shares in February, with net foreign remittances to the stock market amounting to US$1.09 billion from the start of the month until Feb. 10, according to figures released yesterday by the Financial Supervisory Commission's Securities and Futures Bureau. Taiwan has seen net inward remittances by foreign investors increase for three consecutive months since November last year, with the amount hitting a single-month record high of US$8.52 billion in December.
Since the stock market reopened after the Lunar New Year holiday (Feb. 3 until Feb. 10), foreign investors bought listed shares worth NT$569.4 billion (US$17.5 billion) and sold listed shares worth NT$493.4 billion in Taiwan, posting a net buying worth of NT$76 billion, the tallies show.
■ Direct selling booming
Taiwan's direct selling industry is expected to post a growth rate of 30 percent this year, despite competition from other retail businesses, a leading direct selling company said yesterday. According to Amway Taiwan, the market scale of Taiwan's multi-level network marketing amounted to some NT$68.3 billion (US$2.1 billion) in 2004, up 30 percent over the previous year. They noted that health food and skin-care products are the two main product lines fielded by Taiwan's direct selling industry, with the two categories together accounting for more than 60 percent of total sales. They said Amway Taiwan posted sales of NT$6.57 billion in 2005, 28 percent higher than 2004, and that the company was aiming to boost that amount to top NT$7 billion in 2006.
■ NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar declined against its US counterpart yesterday on speculation that foreign investors will add to sales of Taiwan stocks, flocking to the US after the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said interest rates might increase, traders said. The NT dollar fell NT$0.049 to close at NT$32.401 on the Taipei foreign exchange market, on turnover of US$712 million.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
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