TAIEX edges down
Taiwanese share prices closed 0.23 percent lower yesterday, despite Wall Street’s overnight rally, owing to profit-taking, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 11.61 points to 5,035.93 on turnover of NT$116.82 billion (US$3.44 billion).
Construction soared 6 percent and financials were up 1.89 percent, while electronics shed 0.77 percent.
Memory chipmaker ProMOS (茂德) rose 5.88 percent to NT$0.9 after the ailing company extended the deadline for early redemption of its overseas convertible bonds to tomorrow to avoid bankruptcy.
The world’s leading contract microchip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), shed 2.38 percent to NT$49.2, while United Microelectronic Corp (聯電) lost 2.61 percent to NT$9.71.
Yamaha closing piano plants
Japanese musical instrument maker Yamaha Corp will close two piano factories in Taiwan and the UK.
Yamaha will fire all 153 employees at the Taiwan plant, and has not made a decision on the 96 workers at the UK facility, it said in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday.
The company said it aimed to consolidate piano production in Japan, China and Indonesia.
Yamaha also widened its loss forecast for the year ending this month to ¥23 billion (US$241 million) from ¥2 billion and cut its planned annual dividend to ¥42.5 from ¥50.
German court halts HTC ban
An appeals court allowed HTC Corp (宏達電), the largest maker of mobile phones that use Microsoft Corp software, to keep selling its products in Germany while challenging a patent ruling in favor of IPCom GmbH.
The Mannheim Regional Court on Feb. 27 ordered HTC, which in October became the first company to release a handset based on Google Inc’s Android platform, to stop selling products using technology based on IPCom’s patents in Germany.
Wednesday’s interim ruling allows the Taoyuan-based company to continue to sell its products in Germany while the appeal is pending.
“The court has placed a stay on the court order we won against HTC at the District Court of Mannheim this month while it looks into HTC’s appeal,” IPCom managing director Bernhard Frohwitter said in an e-mailed comment. “This is routine procedure.”
Jobs for new graduates halved
The number of job vacancies for the nation’s new college graduates with less than one year of work experience plunged by nearly 50 percent year-on-year to about 60,000 this month, marking a five-year low, according to an online job bank survey released on Wednesday.
The 104 Job Bank (104 人力銀行) survey said the harsh job market had made new college graduates realize they needed to apply for jobs prior to graduation.
A record high of 55,000 aspiring graduates have applied for jobs online this month, up 15 percent from a year ago and 40 percent more than in 2007.
Bond buybacks approved
The central bank said it had revised regulations on government bonds to allow repurchase of notes that are not traded frequently.
The Central Bank of the Republic of China can buy back government securities on behalf of the finance ministry from Monday, the monetary authority said in a statement in Taipei yesterday. The ministry oversees the National Treasury.
Bond repurchases, aimed at increasing liquidity in the debt market and lowering the government’s borrowing costs, would be conducted through public tenders, the central bank said.
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