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■ Sports lottery up for grabs
The Ministry of Finance plans to hold a public bidding for the nation's first sports lottery in the second half of the year, officials said yesterday. This decision is considered to be a setback to Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控), which will become the operator of the public welfare lottery next year. The ministry's National Treasury Agency said that although the government had originally planned to have the sports and public welfare lotteries issued by the same operator, it reconsidered after several financial institutions expressed interest in selling the lucrative sports lottery tickets. The sports lottery will still go into operation on July 1 next year as planned.

■ Chi Mei to control Leadtek
Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) said yesterday it plans to spend US$40 million to buy the remaining stake in an overseas venture capital firm, Leadtek Global Group Ltd, through which the nation's No. 2 flat-panel maker would gain total control over a liquid-crystal-display assembly plant in China. Chi Mei's move came after the government approved its application to invest an additional US$30 million in Ningbo Chi Mei Optoelectronics Ltd (寧波奇美電子) late last month. To save cost, Chi Mei has already spent US$60 million on acquiring a major stake in the Ningbo factory, as well as equipment from the Chinese company Westinghouse Digital Electronics (Ningbo) Ltd (寧波華屋). The company also planned to spend US$30 million to build a LCD television assembly plant in China's Guangdong Province, the statement said.

■ SinoPac eyes bigger profits
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (建華金控), the nation's eighth-largest financial holding company by market value, hopes to grow its net profit for this year by more than 70 percent to NT$10 billion (US$309 million) on gains from overseas operations and its domestic wealth management business. SinoPac acknowledged the negative impact of rising non-performing loans from credit and cash cards, although its position was better than some other local banks, SinoPac chairman Ho Shou-chuan (何壽川) said in an interview on Tuesday. "We'll still keep a target of achieving NT$10 billion," Ho said, referring to profit. "We'll move to wealth management and increase overseas contributions to make up the losses from the credit card department," Ho said. Taipei-based SinoPac's gains from operations in the US, Vietnam and Hong Kong accounted for some 25 percent of its profit last year, Ho said. He expects the overseas profit contribution to rise to 30 percent.

■ Chunghwa Telecom to upgrade
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) plans to spend as much as NT$130 billion (US$4 billion) to build a network combining fixed-line, cellphone and Internet services, the Economic Daily News said, citing John Hsueh (薛紀建), a vice president of the nation's largest provider of phone services. The company will build its "next-generation network" by 2013, the newspaper reported Hsueh as saying. Chunghwa Telecom has been in contact with Lucent Technologies Inc, Siemens AG and Nortel Networks Corp to discuss testing and buying equipment for the project, the Taipei-based, Chinese-language newspaper said.

■ NT dollar firms up
The New Taiwan dollar traded firmer against its US counterpart yesterday, advancing NT$0.034 to close at NT$32.498 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$983 million.

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