■ Shares slightly up
Share prices closed up 0.55 percent yesterday as political concerns offset an early rally driven by Wall Street's overnight gains amid tame US inflation data, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed up 36.83 points at 6,733.46, on turnover of NT$118.86 billion (US$3.63 billion).
"Large-cap stocks managed further gains, suggesting increased interest from foreign investors amid a firming local currency," said Samson Chueh, an assistant vice president with Fuhwa Securities Corp (復華證券).
While bellwether technology stocks followed the direction set by their counterparts in the US, some sectors which had been lagging behind the broader market, such as tourism, staged a recovery, he said.
Decliners outnumbered gainers 518 to 507, with 129 stocks unchanged.
■ CPC hikes gas price
State-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油) announced yesterday that it would hike the prices of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by an average of 15 percent due to rising import costs, effective today.
After the adjustment, industrial natural gas will be NT$13.0366 per cubic meter for mixed LNG mixed, including CPC's product and an imported one, or NT$14.5014 for imported LNG, according to a company statement.
The prices for LNG retailers are NT$12.15 and NT$13.52 per cubic meter. LNG for cogeneration will be NT$12.0980 NT$13.4573 per cubic meter. Prices of LNG for generating electricity range from NT$11.1719 to NT$13.0339 per cubic meter, depending on the season, according to CPC.
■ Lenovo poaches Dell staff
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), the world's third-largest manufacturer of personal computers, hired two executives from Dell Inc to head the company's operations in Asia and Japan.
David Miller, who headed the China business of Dell, the world's largest PC maker, was named president of Lenovo Asia, the Chinese company said yesterday in a statement. Sotaro Amano, former corporate director of Japan sales for Dell, will be president of Lenovo Japan Ltd.
■ Customs seizes fake goods
Customs agents have seized counterfeit fashion items and pirated video games in recent months worth a combined NT$20 million, a spokesman for the Taipei Customs Bureau under the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
According to the spokesman, customs agents seized 1,713 items of fake brand-name products, including leather goods, sunglasses and clothes since customs agents began stepping up inspections of international express delivery packages in June. The pirated products had a market value of NT$11 million, he said.
A total of 6,800 fake Sony video game disks were nabbed by Taipei Customs Bureau agents on Monday -- the second seizure of its kind after 1,626 bootleg X-Box video game disks were seized, the spokesman said, noting that the two seizures were worth more than NT$10 million.
■ Biometric USB drive launched
SanDisk Corp yesterday launched SanDisk Cruzer Profile, a portable, high-speed USB flash drive with finger identification technology embedded in the device to ensure data security to local users, a company statement said.
Through a built-in biometric fingerprint scanner, data stored in the product can be accessed with the swipe of fingerprints of designated users, the statement said.
■ NT remains firm
The New Taiwan dollar maintained strength against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.122 to close at NT$32.627 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$967 million.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
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