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■ Worries push stocks down
Shares closed 1.25 percent lower yesterday as technical gains triggered by Wall Street's mild overnight bounce wobbled amid creditor banks' anxiety over restructuring plans sought by two Taiwanese companies, dealers said.
Concern over whether North Korea would conduct a second nuclear test also pressured the market, they said.
Chia Hsin Food & Synthetic Fiber Co (嘉新食品化纖) and China Rebar Co (中國力霸), two units of Rebar Asia Pacific Group (力霸亞太企業集團), are seeking court permission for reorganization, unnerving their creditor banks, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed down 98.94 points at 7,835.57 on turnover of NT$143.030 billion (US$4.39 billion).
Decliners outnumbered gainers 840 to 377, with 146 stocks unchanged.
For the week to Jan. 5, the weighted index closed up 11.85 points or 0.15 percent after a 2.24 percent increase a week earlier.
Average daily turnover stood at NT$144.77 billion, compared with NT$96.86 billion a week ago.

■ Carlyle to submit buy plan
The Carlyle Group will next week apply to buy a stake in Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world's largest chip packaging and testing company, the financial regulator said.
Carlyle will make the application to the Investment Commission, Financial Supervisory Commission Vice Chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮) said yesterday.
Carlyle, the biggest US buyout firm, on Nov. 24 said it was in talks to buy ASE for US$5.7 billion.
The authorities are in talks with Carlyle over its plans for ASE's listing, Chang said. The government couldn't block ASE from delisting in Taiwan, which requires the approval of two-thirds of the firm's investors, she said.

■ Rescue bid for BenQ Mobile?
The regional state authorities of North Rhine-Westphalia are considering a bid to rescue insolvent mobile phone maker BenQ Mobile, at least until a long-term investor can be found, the Die Welt daily reported online yesterday.
"We'll do everything that is feasible within subsidy rules to bring the situation forward," the newspaper quoted a spokesman for North Rhine-Westphalia economics minister Christa Thoben as saying.
The regional government was considering issuing a guarantee for BenQ Mobile, the failed German arm of electronics maker BenQ Corp (明基), the paper said.
A state guarantee could be a necessary precondition for a sale of BenQ Mobile to a group of German and US investors that has expressed interest in buying the company, the paper said.
BenQ had consolidated sales last month of NT$10.6 billion (US$325 million), the company said in a statement.
Sales fell 53 percent from NT$22.6 billion in December 2005, according to calculations based on figures posted on BenQ's Web site. Revenue fell from NT$11.9 billion in November.

■ Reserves rise by a billion
The nation's foreign exchange reserves totaled US$266.15 billion at the end of last month, up US$1.01 billion from November, the central bank said yesterday.
The increase reflected returns from foreign exchange reserves management, the bank said in a statement. It said Taiwan remained the country with the world's third-largest foreign exchange reserves after China and Japan.

■ NT dollar trades lower
The New Taiwan dollar traded lower against its US counterpart yesterday after a fall in the local stock market.
The NT dollar fell NT$0.059 to close at NT$32.609 against the greenback on the Taipei Forex Inc.
Turnover was US$1.374 billion.

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