■ 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.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
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