Shares rise on US gains
Taiwanese shares closed up 0.79 percent yesterday in line with Wall Street’s gains last week, dealers said.
The weighted index closed up 64.18 points at 8,169.77, off a low of 8,139.84 and a high of 8,227.39, on turnover of NT$84.24 billion (US$2.76 billion).
The market opened higher following Wall Street’s rise on Friday, but gains were capped, with the index moving closer to the nearest resistance of 8,200 to 8,300 points, dealers said.
“There are still short positions by margin players, at least for the rest of the week,” Fubon Securities (富邦證券) analyst Michael Lin told Dow Jones Newswires.
Grand Cathay Securities (大華證券) analyst Mars Hsu agreed, saying the thin daily turnover indicated many investors were content to stay on the sidelines.
Hsu said that investors, concerned over inflation amid high crude prices, perceived the Wall Street gains as merely a technical rebound.
He said investors were looking into more US economic data to decide how the US economy would perform this quarter.
“I do not expect the local market to get out of the current narrow movement mode soon,” Hsu said.
PC shipments fell 19% in Q1
Shipments of Taiwan-made personal computers dropped 19 percent quarter-on-quarter to 558,389 units in the first three months of the year, a report by market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) showed yesterday.
Desktop computers saw a quarter-on-quarter 20 percent decline to 346,102 units in the first quarter, while notebook computers posted a 17 percent decline during the same period of time, IDC said.
The market researcher said that political instability, surging oil prices and a weakening US economy upset consumer confidence in an already slack season.
IDC said it remained conservative about the PC market’s shipment prospects in the current quarter.
New chair for Far Eastern bank
Far Eastern International Bank (遠東商銀), the banking arm of the nation’s largest textiles maker, has replaced Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) as chairman of the bank founded by his father 16 years ago.
Hsu, 65, will be succeeded by Hou Ching-ing (侯金英), a member of the bank’s board and chairwoman of the Taiwan Academy of Banking and Finance, Taipei-based Far Eastern said in an exchange filing yesterday.
The change is to comply with an a law passed last year prohibiting a bank chairman from concurrently heading a non-financial company, the filing said.
Hsu, ranked this month by Forbes as Taiwan’s 14th richest person, with a net worth of US$1.75 billion, is chairman of eight other companies, including Far Eastern Textile Co (遠東紡織).
The Far Eastern Group was started by Hsu’s father, Hsu You- hsiang (徐有庠), who founded the banking subsidiary in 1992.
SinoPac appoints chairman
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co’s (永豐金) board yesterday named appointed Sean Chen (陳沖), formerly chairman of KGI Securities (中信證), its new chairman.
The firm also appointed Mckinney Tsai (蔡友才), the former president of Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), as its new chief executive officer.
SinoPac Financial expects the reshuffle to bring in new talent to help pull it out of the red in the second half of this year.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar advanced NT$0.062 yesterday to close at NT$30.389 against the greenback on turnover of US$1.037 billion.
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