Taiwanese shares drop 0.22%
Taiwanese shares closed down 0.22 percent yesterday in thin trade despite modest gains on Wall Street, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 9.64 points to 4,413.45 on turnover of NT$29.5 billion (US$893 million).
Losers led gainers by 700 to 692 with 334 stocks unchanged.
Many investors chose to stay on the sidelines during Christmas and New Year holidays to wait for a clearer indication when Wall Street and other regional markets resume trading, traders said.
“The economic outlook is pessimistic, so local investors have no intention of building positions unless their investment targets drop to very low levels,” said KGI Securities (凱基證券) trader Scott Hsu.
M2 money supply up 5.05%
The nation’s M2 money supply, the broadest measure of money flowing through the banking system, grew 5.05 percent last month from a year earlier, up from a 4.09 percent rise in October, the central bank said yesterday.
The bank attributed the faster growth to a net inflow of funds as Taiwanese expatriates repatriated investments from overseas, and an increase in bank loans.
M1A, meanwhile, rose 1.19 percent last month, following a 1.64 percent rise the previous month, the statement said. M1B dropped 3.55 percent for the 11th straight month, following a 4.08 percent fall in October, the statement said.
New chairman at Taisugar
Hu Mao-lin (胡懋麟), a former vice chairman of the Council of Agriculture, yesterday replaced Wu Rong-ming (吳容明) as chairman of Taiwan Sugar Corp (台糖) as the company held a swearing-in ceremony at its headquarters in Tainan.
Hu’s appointment was approved on Wednesday by the company’s board of directors.
Wu, who had been in his post for only two months, unexpectedly tendered his resignation last month in protest at Straits Exchange Foundation chairman Chiang Pin-kung’s (江丙坤) attempt to install his nephew Chen Ching-bin (陳清彬) over Wu’s favored candidate as general manager.
IBT Securities bosses caned
The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday ordered IBT Securities Co (台灣工銀證券) to dismiss chairman Lin Chin-hsiang (林慶祥) from his post and suspend president Morris Hsu (�?Z) from his duties for one year over inadequate oversight of company affairs and violating securities regulations.
The commission said in a statement that it would also order the local securities firm to cease new underwriting business activities for three months from Jan. 1 through March 31.
The financial regulator’s punishment for IBT Securities and its two high-ranking executives came after the securities firm was found to have flaws in the way it conducted reverse repurchase transactions on collateralized bond obligations (CBOs) with two counterparties, resulting in a default of around NT$2.79 billion (US$84.6 million).
On Wednesday, the securities firm’s parent company, Industrial Bank of Taiwan (台灣工銀), said its board had approved the resignation of Lin and had decided to award a major demerit to Hsu.
The board of Industrial Bank of Taiwan yesterday appointed Gordon Lin (林杇柴), an executive vice president, as acting chairman of the securities firm for the interim period.
Currency gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.015 to close at NT$33.030.
A total of US$547 million changed hands during the day’s trading.
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
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Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
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