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.
SETBACK: Apple’s India iPhone push has been disrupted after Foxconn recalled hundreds of Chinese engineers, amid Beijing’s attempts to curb tech transfers Apple Inc assembly partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has recalled about 300 Chinese engineers from a factory in India, the latest setback for the iPhone maker’s push to rapidly expand in the country. The extraction of Chinese workers from the factory of Yuzhan Technology (India) Private Ltd, a Hon Hai component unit, in southern Tamil Nadu state, is the second such move in a few months. The company has started flying in Taiwanese engineers to replace staff leaving, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named, as the
The prices of gasoline and diesel at domestic fuel stations are to rise NT$0.1 and NT$0.4 per liter this week respectively, after international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to rise to NT$27.3, NT$28.8 and NT$30.8 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to rise to NT$26.2 per liter at CPC stations and NT$26 at Formosa pumps, they said. The announcements came after international crude oil prices
STABLE DEMAND: Delta supplies US clients in the aerospace, defense and machinery segments, and expects second-half sales to be similar to the first half Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) expects its US automation business to remain steady in the second half, with no signs of weakening client demand. With demand from US clients remaining solid, its performance in the second half is expected to be similar to that of the first half, Andy Liu (劉佳容), general manager of the company’s industrial automation business group, said on the sidelines of the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show in Taipei on Wednesday. The company earlier reported that revenue from its automation business grew 7 percent year-on-year to NT$27.22 billion (US$889.98 million) in the first half, accounting for 11 percent
A German company is putting used electric vehicle batteries to new use by stacking them into fridge-size units that homes and businesses can use to store their excess solar and wind energy. This week, the company Voltfang — which means “catching volts” — opened its first industrial site in Aachen, Germany, near the Belgian and Dutch borders. With about 100 staff, Voltfang says it is the biggest facility of its kind in Europe in the budding sector of refurbishing lithium-ion batteries. Its CEO David Oudsandji hopes it would help Europe’s biggest economy ween itself off fossil fuels and increasingly rely on climate-friendly renewables. While