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Acer extends Gateway offer

Acer Inc said yesterday that it would extend its US$710 million offer for Gateway Inc of the US until 5pm EDT next Wednesday, the company said in a statement.

The company originally set a deadline for the offer at midnight EDT on Monday.

Acer said the extension was made to allow US regulators, Committee on Foreign Investment, sufficient time to complete a review of the deal which was first announced on Aug. 27.

Acer began acquiring Gateway shares in the open market on Sept. 4 and it has secured 371 million shares, or nearly 80.68 percent, of Gateway as of Monday, it said.

Ministry to sell steel shares

The Ministry of Finance plans to raise about NT$5.52 billion (US$169 million) selling shares of China Steel Corp (中鋼) and Central Reinsurance Co (中央再保). The sale is to help fund the government's budget, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News said yesterday.

The ministry is seeking an arranger to sell 97.9 million shares of the steelmaker and 45.6 million shares in the insurer in an after-market tender, according to a public auction notice on the government's Web site dated yesterday.

The notice didn't give a reason for the sale, or say how many shares the government will hold after completion.

The government will raise NT$4.79 billion (US$147 million) from the sale of China Steel shares and NT$725 million through selling the insurer's stock, based on the shares' closing price on Monday.

Taiwan will post a budget deficit of NT$142.3 billion, given government income forecast at NT$1.49 trillion, the government's statistics bureau said in June.

Greenspan warns of bubble

The Shanghai stock market has all the hallmarks of a bubble, former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said on Monday.

"The Shanghai market has got all the characteristics of a bubble," Greenspan said in a public talk here to promote his new book.

"If you ever wanted to get a definition of a bubble in the works, this is it," he said.

The Shanghai Composite Index jumped 45 percent over the third quarter, one of the strongest performances among global equity markets during that period.

TransAsia extends offer

TransAsia Airways Corp (復興航空) said yesterday that it would extend an offering of a 50 percent discount for travel between Taipei and Kaohsiung till next month.

Last week, the air carrier announced a fare of NT$1,090 for the Taipei-Kaohsiung route, available through the end of this month, to counterbalance the impact from the high speed rail.

TransAsia said it would continue offering the preferential fares after seeing passenger load increase dramatically in the last few days to nearly 90 percent from 30 percent previously.

The airline's offering of NT$1,090 are NT$400 lower than fares offered by the nation's bullet train service on the route, as well as lower than those of three other domestic carriers, including Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (遠東航空), Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) and Uni Airways Corp (立榮航空).

HSBC to offer online services

HSBC Holdings Plc said it plans to introduce its Internet-based banking and savings service into as many as four more countries next year.

The HSBC Direct service was started in Canada, the US, Korea and Taiwan between November 2005 and June this year, London-based HSBC said in slides posted on its Web site today. The slides were used in a speech by chief executive officer Michael Geoghegan at a Merrill Lynch & Co conference for investors in London.


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