Bank to upgrade Vietnam office
Taipei-based Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank (上海商業銀行) said yesterday that it expects to open a branch in Vietnam by the end of this year.
The bank said it has obtained the green light from Vietnamese authorities to upgrade its representative office in Bien Hoa City, the capital of Dong Nai Province in southern Vietnam, into a branch.
The bank’s Bien Hoa office was established in March 2006. It will become the bank’s second overseas branch after its Hong Kong branch opened in June 2008.
“Dong Nai Province is Vietnam’s industrial zone, where many Taiwanese investors have set up production facilities. We look forward to providing services to them,” a bank spokeswoman said.
The bank said the Dong Nai branch will specialize in corporate banking services, providing Taiwanese firms with deposit, remittance, currency exchange, trade financing and fund management services.
EnTie auctions property
EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰銀行) sold NT$900 million (US$29 million) of Taipei commercial properties at an auction to the Taiwan unit of Hengdeli Holdings Ltd (亨得利控股), the Taipei-based lender said in a stock exchange filing yesterday.
The bank expects to book a gain of NT$501 million from the sale.
Central bank issues CDs
The central bank issued NT$425.6 billion of certificates of deposit (CDs) in four tranches yesterday, including NT$100 billion in 364-day certificates auctioned on Friday, the monetary authority said in a statement on its Web site.
That was more than the NT$391.7 billion that matured yesterday, the statement said. The central bank sold 30-day CDs at 0.69 percent, 91-day CDs at 0.73 percent and 182-day CDs at 0.83 percent, the central bank’s statement said.
Taiwan to host conference
Taiwan will host an international conference today to discuss research progress, commercial opportunities and communication applications related to the nation’s automotive industry, the event’s organizer announced on Sunday.
The conference is also aimed at creating new markets for local companies and providing them with opportunities to enter the automobile industry’s global supply chain.
It has invited international representatives from academia and industry, including Microsoft, to take part in the event, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院) said.
The conference will be held at the Taipei World Trade Center’s Nangang Exhibition Hall.
According to a forecast from research firm iSuppli, the global market for automotive electronic components will increase to more than US$100 billion by 2014, as the ratio of electronic components to the total cost of producing a car has risen from 19 percent in 2001 to 40 percent this year.
Firm mulls India, Mexico plants
China Steel Corp (中鋼) is considering building plants in India and Mexico, the Kaohsiung-based company said yesterday in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
TAIEX down in thin trade
The benchmark TAIEX closed down 0.81 percent yesterday in thin trade as investors took profits, eroding early gains despite a strong end to last week on Wall Street, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 67.43 points to 8,176.76, after moving between 8,165.20 and 8,277.78, on turnover of NT$95.85 billion.
The construction sector suffered the heaviest selling, down 2.19 percent. Cement stocks lost 1.51 percent, plastics and chemicals fell 1.2 percent, while the financial sector shed 1.14 percent.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is