Cash boost for Cathay Life
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), the nation’s largest listed financial services company, is to inject NT$10 billion (US$307 million) into its Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) unit to boost the insurer’s capital adequacy ratio, a stock exchange filing said yesterday.
Cathay Financial’s board also approved the company’s financial report for the first three quarters, with profit surging 107 percent to NT$7.84 billion, or NT$0.81 per share, during the first nine months.
Among its subsidiaries, Cathay Life saw net income of NT$1.19 billion, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) reported a profit of NT$6.57 billion and Cathay Century Insurance Co (國泰世紀產險) posted a profit of NT$560 million.
Bank bosses make top pay list
Four Taiwanese banking heads have been listed among the 50 most highly paid bank executives in the Asia-Pacific region, a report released on Wednesday by the Asian Banker Journal said.
Among the the top earners was Ta Chong Bank (大眾銀行) president Edmund Koh (�?w), who with a total remuneration package of between US$1.5 million and US$3.01 million was ranked the 16th-highest paid in the region.
EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰銀行) president Jesse Ding (丁予康) was ranked 32nd with a pay of US$480,000, Far Eastern International Bank (遠東商銀) president Eli Hong (洪信德) 39th with US$250,000 and Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行) chairman Julius Chen (陳淮舟) 43rd with a remuneration package of US$150,000 to US$300,000.
China Steel sees income fall
China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation’s largest steelmaker, saw net income drop 17 percent to NT$10.4 billion (US$319 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, from NT$12.6 billion a year earlier, figures from nine-month earnings released by the Kaohsiung-based mill yesterday showed.
China Steel raised domestic prices twice in the third quarter as an economic recovery bolstered steel demand. The company booked NT$11.2 billion in write backs for stockpiles and raw materials in the third quarter, it said on Wednesday.
Nine-month net income dropped to NT$3.92 billion, or NT$0.3 a share, from NT$39.5 billion, or NT$3.14 a share a year earlier, the company said in the statement. The mill posted an operating loss of NT$3.28 billion in the nine months.
Wistron to raise cash
Local contract PC maker Wistron Corp (緯創) said on Wednesday its board had approved a proposal to raise a total of US$149.1 million to expand capacity and boost working capital at its four Chinese units.
The company also planned to inject US$31 million into its Mexican unit and invest 12 million euros (US$17.7 million) in a new company in the Netherlands that develops display technologies, a stock exchange filing said.
NT dollar slumps again
The New Taiwan dollar fell for a third day on speculation the central bank would clamp down on property lending and that a faltering global economic recovery would curb exports.
The NT dollar fell 0.3 percent to NT$32.58 against its US counterpart as of the 4pm close, Taipei Forex Inc said. The currency had hit NT$32.65, its weakest level since Sept. 15.
The currency fell as the TAIEX index slumped 2.37 percent, its biggest loss since July.
“Taiwan’s dollar is being affected by short-term money flows,” said Tigr Cheng (程裕城), a strategist at Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券). “The US dollar is strong because investors are taking profit from selling assets with higher risk, such as stocks.”
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to