A property analyst advised caution yesterday amid growing media speculation over potential investments in the local real estate market by a group of visiting Chinese tycoons.
Despite the media’s attempts to paint a rosy picture of prospective Chinese investments, Kristy Huang (黃郁琪), director of CB Richard Ellis Taiwan’s (CBRE) institutional investment properties division, said that Chinese capital has yet to be injected into Taiwan.
“[Chinese investors] may have problem securing enough loans from local banks to fund their investment projects here unless they have enough capital of their own,” Huang told an American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) gathering.
The main source of capital inflow that could give the local property market a boost will still come from European and US investors, who have invested early on in Taiwan, or from Hong Kong and Malaysia, she said.
“It all depends on whether [Chinese investors] can offer valuable collateral to secure enough bank loans given the tight credit environment,” Huang said. “Chinese capital won’t be the mainstream source of potential capital injection for the time being.”
For example, the chances of Chinese investors winning in the upcoming auction of Agora Garden (亞太會館) hotel in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), with a floor price set at NT$14.9 billion (US$492 million), is slim, she said.
The members of the visiting Chinese property tycoon delegation, who visited Pingtung County’s Dapeng Bay National Scenic Area yesterday, had expressed their interest in acquiring the hotel or taking part in the operation of the Chiang Kai-shek mausoleum area (兩蔣文化園區) in Taoyuan and the Shuinan Trade Zone (水湳經貿園區) in Taichung, local media reported.
While CBRE advised caution, a local property developer was optimistic that Chinese investments would lift the local market.
“Their capital injection will boost local property prices and indirectly benefit local developers,” Mu Chun-sung (穆椿松), chairman of the Taiwan Construction Development Federation (台灣省建築開發公會), said by telephone yesterday.
Mu was also confident that Chinese investors would be able to secure the necessary bank loans.
“If necessary, they can go through multinational banks, not local banks, such as Citigroup [through a third country] to take out loans,” he said. “It won’t be a problem for [Chinese investors] to funnel funds [into Taiwan].”
Mu also dismissed concerns that Chinese investment would raise overall property prices, putting them out of reach of local home buyers.
He said that Chinese capital was likely to flow into and raise the prices of luxury homes or big property development projects, which will have a limited impact on the average prices of properties designed for the low to mid-income households.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
FACTORY SHIFT: While Taiwan produces most of the world’s AI servers, firms are under pressure to move manufacturing amid geopolitical tensions Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) started building artificial intelligence (AI) servers in India’s south, the latest boon for the rapidly growing country’s push to become a high-tech powerhouse. The company yesterday said it has started making the large, powerful computers in Pondicherry, southeastern India, moving beyond products such as laptops and smartphones. The Chinese company would also build out its facilities in the Bangalore region, including a research lab with a focus on AI. Lenovo’s plans mark another win for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who tries to attract more technology investment into the country. While India’s tense relationship with China has suffered setbacks