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.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last