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TAIEX in technical rebound

Taiwanese shares closed up 0.54 percent yesterday on a technical rebound following Wall Street gains overnight, dealers said.

The TAIEX index rose 41.35 points to 7,649.28 on turnover of NT$117.23 billion (US$3.62 billion).

Gainers led losers by 1,527 to 1,027, with 217 stocks unchanged.

The market opened up 0.57 percent as investors took cues from a Wall Street recovery, and the momentum stayed throughout the session, fending off profit-taking pressure and pushing toward 7,700, dealers said.

However, analysts said the upside was mainly technical in nature after Thursday’s 1.21 percent fall.

“The market still drifted without a clear direction after recent strong gains,” Concord Securities (康和證券) analyst Allen Lin said.

“Investors remain concerned about possible volatility in the US market as Wall Street hovers around the 10,000-point mark,” he said.

SinoPac names Paul Chiu

Former vice premier Paul Chiu (邱正雄) is taking the chairmanship of Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行), replacing Mckinney Tsai (蔡友才), the bank’s parent SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) said in a stock exchange filing yesterday.

The appointment takes effect immediately, it said.

Chiu stepped down from the vice premier’s post last month amid a Cabinet reshuffle. Prior to that job, he served as chairman at EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰商銀) and Grand Cathay Securities Corp (大華證券), as well as minister of finance and deputy govenor of the central bank.

SinoPac Financial said it was aiming to develop its banking unit into a regional player, based on Chiu’s experience in the financial industry.

Hynix records profit

Hynix Semiconductor Inc recorded its first quarterly net profit in two years as prices for memory chips rose in a rapidly recovering market.

The company said in a regulatory filing that it earned 246.28 billion won (US$207.25 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30. It posted a net loss of 1.67 trillion won a year earlier. The profit ended seven straight quarters of losses.

Icheon, South Korea-based Hynix said third quarter sales rose 15 percent to 2.12 trillion won from 1.84 trillion won the year before.

Hynix attributed the results to a “faster than expected market recovery.” The company said average selling prices for DRAM, or dynamic random access memory chips, increased 26 percent from the previous quarter. Prices for NAND flash memory chips rose 4 percent.

UK recession longest ever

Britain’s economy contracted unexpectedly in the third quarter of this year, squashing hopes of an end to the downturn and instead making the current recession the longest on record, official data showed yesterday.

The Office for National Statistics said British GDP fell by 0.4 percent between July and last month against analyst expectations of a 0.2 percent rise, meaning the economy has contracted for six successive quarters for the first time since records began in 1955.

Output shrank by 5.2 percent year on year, a figure only marginally better than the record 5.5 percent annual fall registered in the second quarter. The quarterly decline between April and June was unchanged at 0.6 percent.

NT dollar gains ground

The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.005 to close at NT$32.398.

Turnover was US$752 million.
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