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.
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