Shares close higher
Taiwanese shares opened low and closed higher yesterday, with the weighted TAIEX index advancing 52.59 points, or 0.82 percent, to close at 6,485.14.
Rebounding from losses the previous day, the local bourse opened at 6,449.46 and fluctuated between 6,512.07 and 6,435.49 before closing above the index’s 10-year moving average of 6,470.
A total of 6.22 billion shares changed hands on market turnover of NT$159.84 billion (US$4.87 billion).
The weighted index is not expected to move higher in the coming days, said Wang Chao-li (王兆立), an analyst at Polaris Financial Group (寶來金融集團), adding that the share index would likely to rise in the near future.
Hontai, Taikang plan deal
Hontai Life Insurance Co (宏泰人壽), the nation’s seventh-largest life insurer by premium income, is planning cross-shareholding with China’s Taikang Life Insurance Co (泰康人壽) in a bid to tap the Chinese market, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, without citing sources.
Hontai said on Tuesday it would sell 11 percent of its shares to Japan’s Taiyo Life Insurance Co for NT$1.07 billion (US$32.5 million). Chairman David Jou (周國瑞) said the firm was in talks with some Chinese insurers on potential cooperation.
The paper said Hontai would and Taikang would discuss details next week in Beijing. Jou rebutted the report.
Food companies eye Fujian
The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) will organize a trade mission with representatives from 50 local food companies to Fuzhou and Xiamen in China’s Fujian Province later this month, a TAITRA official said on Monday.
The aim of the mission is to explore the market for Taiwan’s products. The group will leave on May 21.
The mission will conduct talks with supermarket chains in Xiamen, including Trust-Mart, Carrefour, Walmart and RT-Mart.
Telecoms to buy equipment
Several Chinese telecoms operators are scheduled to procure between NT$30 billion and NT$40 billion in communications products in Taiwan next month, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday.
The report, citing unnamed officials at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, said Chinese companies such as China Mobile Ltd (中國移動), China Telecom Corp (中國電信), Datang Telecom Technology Co (大唐) and ZTE Corp (中興) would place orders with Taiwanese makers including HTC Corp (宏達電), Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) and Zyxel Communications Corp (合勤).
Seoul to spend on ‘green’ IT
South Korea said yesterday it would spend more than US$3 billion over the next five years to develop information technology (IT) as an “eco-friendly” growth engine.
The Presidential Committee on Green Growth said the government would put 4.2 trillion won (US$3.4 billion) into 10 projects by 2013.
They include creating energy-saving versions of products like personal computers, TVs, displays and servers, as well as developing energy-efficient IT service networks including high-speed Internet lines.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.003 to close at NT$32.890.
A total of US$1.12 billion changed hands during the day’s trading.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
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