Market reverses losses
Shares closed 0.78 percent higher yesterday as rotational play across the board reversed losses early in the session that tracked Wall Street's overnight pullback, dealers said.
Upside was capped, however, due to investor caution over upcoming corporate results by key US and local firms, they said.
The TAIEX closed up 74.02 points at 9,592.47, on turnover of NT$157.34 billion (US$4.83 billion).
Risers led decliners 1,099 to 833, with 256 stocks unchanged.
On the foreign exchange market, the New Taiwan dollar closed the day's trading at NT$32.597 over the US dollar, up NT$0.001 from the previous close of NT$32.598.
The NT dollar earlier dropped the most in two months as crude oil touched a record high.
Turnover was US$1.359 billion on the Taipei Forex Inc.
Millions in five-year bonds sold
The central bank yesterday sold NT$28.25 billion (US$866.7 million) in five-year government bonds at a yield of 2.74 percent, the central bank announced in a statement.
The central bank sold the five-year bonds on behalf of the Ministry of Finance, which originally planned to sell NT$30 billion of the bonds to fund the construction of a new science park.
The bonds will be issued on Friday and mature on Oct. 19, 2012, the statement said.
On Oct. 4, the central bank sold NT$30 billion in five-year bonds at a yield of 2.603 percent. That batch of bonds was issued on Oct. 9 and will mature on July 20, 2012.
For the year, the ministry has planned to sell a total of NT$410 billion in bonds, after it issued NT$110 billion in the first quarter, NT$100 billion in the second and NT$70 billion in the third.
Delegation to attend conference
Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Vice Chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮) will lead a Taiwan insurance business delegation to attend the 14th annual conference of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from Oct. 16 to Oct. 19.
Chang said that more than 500 delegates of financial supervisors from 90 countries will attend the IAIS annual conference this year. In addition, 160 representatives of insurance companies and international organizations will attend as observers.
The IAIS holds three meetings and a conference every year. At last year's conference, members of the association passed a resolution stating that the FSC will host the three meetings slated for 2010 in Taipei.
Arm of PRC central bank sold
China's US$200 billion state investment agency has paid US$67 billion for a key investment arm of the nation's central bank, the firm's chief said yesterday.
"We have bought [Central Huijin] for 67 billion dollars," Lou Jiwei (樓繼偉), chairman of China Investment Corp, told reporters on the sidelines of the 17th Communist Party congress, the nation's most important political meeting in five years where major policy decisions are made.
Central Huijin was an agency created as an investment vehicle that could act as the main owner of China's largest four state-run banks.
Its sale means it becomes part of China Investment, the new agency tasked with maximizing investment returns on part of China's US$1.4 trillion in forex holdings that are by far the world's largest.
Lou said that the firm could invest anywhere, including Hong Kong and Taiwan.
"There are no restrictions," he said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to