Wall Street drags TAIEX lower
Shares closed 3.85 percent lower yesterday following Wall Street’s fall on Wednesday after the US government changed tack on its use of a US$700 billion bailout package, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 177.74 points to 4,437.83 on turnover of NT$49.25 billion (US$1.5 billion).
Decliners led gainers 1,274 to 181, with 264 stocks unchanged.
Analysts expected the main index to continue falling and test 4,200 if US shares extended the losses later yesterday.
OECD sees ‘protracted’ decline
Leading industrialized nations appear to be in a “protracted” downturn, with the US, Japan and the eurozone economies likely to shrink next year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said yesterday.
The OECD predicted a return to modest growth in 2010.
“The OECD area now appears to have entered recession,” the Paris-based grouping of the world’s 30 most developed economies said in a statement, with OECD projections pointing to “a protracted downturn.”
It saw OECD countries contracting 0.3 percent next year, after growth of 1.4 percent this year, before rebounding to 1.5 percent in 2010.
The US economy may contract 0.9 percent next year, Japan 0.1 percent and the eurozone 0.5 percent after posting respective gains this year of 1.4 percent, 0.5 percent and 1.1 percent, it said.
Protesters storm First Bank
Investors who purchased structured notes that were linked to failed US investment bank Lehman Brothers yesterday stormed the First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) for the second time in protest against the bank’s failure to fulfill its promise to make public the original English-language details of the contracts.
The investors alleged that the bank violated the contract which they say may have explicitly disallowed the bank to sell the notes in Taiwan, said Peter Lee, a representative of the protesters, adding that the protesters want the bank to buy back the notes.
Two weeks ago, after the investors staged their first protest outside the bank, First Bank agreed to make public the original contract by Wednesday last week, but that has still not happened.
FSC suspends Allen Chu
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday decided to suspend Allen Chu (朱成志) from his position as a board member at Marbo Securities Consultant Co (萬寶證券投顧) for one month as punishment for misleading comments that appeared in the company’s weekly report.
The dates of the one-month suspension would be announced shortly, the commission said.
Chu’s article, published in mid-September, misrepresented the daily amount of short-selling to argue that foreign investors had dumped local shares by selling short, saying that was the reason local stocks plummeted that day.
Chu also mistakenly wrote that shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) had fallen 5.1 percent on July 23, when the actual decline was 0.52 percent, the commission said.
In his plea, Chu said he regretted the error and admitted that he had been confused by the short-selling process, the commission said.
NT dollar trades lower
The New Taiwan dollar fell NT$0.187 and traded as low as NT$33.177 against the US dollar yesterday, the lowest close since Oct. 29, Taiwan Forex Inc’s figures showed.
The NT dollar, which fell 0.55 percent against the greenback, was relatively stable compared with the won and Singaporean dollar, which fell 2.3 percent and 0.94 percent respectively, the central bank said.
STAFF WRITER, WITH AGENCIES
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