Kuo Tai-cheng passes on
Kuo Tai-cheng (郭台成), former chairman of Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準) and brother of Terry Gou (郭台銘), Taiwan's second-richest man, died yesterday of cancer, a company spokesman said.
Kuo, born in 1961, died at 2:17pm in a Beijing hospital accompanied by his wife and brother, said Edmund Ding (丁祁安), spokesman for Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密). Foxconn Technology is an affiliate of Hon Hai, of which Gou is chairman.
Kuo stepped down as chairman of Taipei-based Foxconn on May 19, according to a filing to the Taiwan stock exchange. The statement did not state a reason for his resignation.
Nokia chooses Synnex
Nokia of Finland plans to boost its presence in Taiwan by using Synnex Technology International Corp (聯強), as the "fulfilment distributor" for Nokia cellphones, a newspaper reported yesterday.
The Commercial Times said that the announcement came after Synnex had been dismissed by Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信) as its cellphone distributor.
Nokia sells about 17 million cellphones each year in Taiwan and commands about 30 percent of the market. Synnex will not only handle Nokia cellphone sales, but also take care of logistics.
P/E ratio of stocks up
The average price-to-earnings ratio (P/E ratio) of stocks listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange was 20.26 at the end of last month, up by 18.47 compared with the end of May, statistics showed.
Financial stocks had the highest P/E ratio among all sectors at 49.16, while steelmakers posted the lowest P/E ratio of 8.97.
The average yield of all stocks listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange dropped from 4.29 percent in May to 3.93 percent last month, the stock regulator said. The average price-to-book ratio climbed from 1.9 in May to 2.06 last month, the statistics showed.
Vietnam approves investment
The Vietnamese government has approved an investment project proposed by Taiwan's Chinfon Trading Group (慶豐貿易集團) to produce compact trucks, vans and motorbikes in southern Vietnam, a Vietnamese daily reported yesterday.
Chinfon Trading Group, which has already invested more than US$700 million in 26 investment projects in Vietnam, is planning to channel another US$78 million into the country, the report said.
The report said Chinfon had submitted the investment proposal two years ago, planning to produce 10,000 trucks and vans per year. Construction of the factory is expected to start before the end of this year.
The Chinfon Trading Group has in the past invested in banking, cement processing, shrimp farming and the health industry in Vietnam.
Taiwan is the largest source of foreign investment for Vietnam.
Memory makers' shares rise
Shares of Samsung Electronics Co, Hynix Semiconductor Inc and other computer memory chipmakers rose on optimism that prices of the product will rise and boost earnings this quarter.
Chipmakers will raise prices of dynamic-random-access memory, or DRAM, by at least 10 percent this month from last month, Dramexchange.com (集邦科技), Asia's biggest spot market for the chips, said in a statement yesterday. That would be the biggest increase since March last year, Taipei-based DRAMeXchange said.
Prices have plunged more than 60 percent this year, eroding earnings at DRAM companies.
In Taiwan, Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation's biggest DRAM maker, advanced 1.7 percent, while Nanya Technology Corp's (南亞科技) stock rose 1.6 percent to close at an almost five-year high.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
The US said it plans to help build a first-of-its-kind industrial hub in the Philippines to boost production of inputs crucial to US supply chains. The 4,000-acre hub is intended to be “a purpose-built platform for allied manufacturing” and “an investment acceleration hub where the specific industrial activities are shaped by market demand,” the US Department of State said on Thursday. The project — touted as an “economic security zone” — would be within the Luzon Economic Corridor, a flagship economic project backed by the US and Japan on the main Philippine island. The project was also described as “the first artificial intelligence
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