TAIEX edges up slightly
The TAIEX closed higher yesterday, with the weighted index rising 5.31 points, or 0.06 percent, to 8,372.48, on turnover of NT$150.48 billion (US$4.94 billion).
The TAIEX opened higher at 8,384.64 and fluctuated between a high of 8,443.38 and a low of 8,363.97 during the day’s trading.
A total of 2,576 stocks closed higher and 1,569 lower, while 362 remained unchanged.
Foreign investors and Chinese qualified domestic institutional investors were net sellers of NT$1.27 billion in shares.
TCA elections heat up
New heavyweight members are set to join in next month’s election of directors and supervisors at the Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會).
New candidates that are competing for the seats of 27 directors and nine supervisors include those from HTC Corp (宏達電) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科), TCA’s -secretary-general Enoch Du (杜全昌) said yesterday.
Other candidates that have signed up include 4G operators, mobile device components makers and firms involved in green technologies, he added. Acer chairman Wang Jeng-tang (王振堂) has made public his intention to run for a second term at the helm.
Chip equipment sales to rise
Chip-equipment sales will rise more than anticipated this year, Semiconductor Equipment & Materials International said, raising the industry trade group’s previous estimate.
Industry sales will more than double to US$37.5 billion this year, SEMI said in a statement today. SEMI on July 13 forecast global semiconductor equipment would reach US$32.5 billion this year.
Toyota Tsusho wins approval
Toyota Tsusho Corp (豐田通商) won Taiwanese government approval to invest equivalent of NT$1.75 billion in Greencol Taiwan Corp (台灣綠醇), a chemical venture, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement on its Web site yesterday.
Plant running ‘smoothly’: FPC
Formosa Petrochemical Corp’s (FPC, 台塑石化) No. 1 ethylene plant is running “smoothly,” the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, following a report in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News that the unit may be halted for repairs next month.
The nation’s only publicly traded oil refiner expects its crude processing to rise about 16 percent next month after resuming production at a delayed coker.
The company will probably refine an average 430,000 barrels of crude a day next month, more than an estimated 370,000 barrels this month, Lin Keh-yen (林克彥), a company spokesman, said yesterday.
Bad loan ratio drops
The nation’s non-performing loans at the end of last month totaled NT$143.7 billion (US$4.66 billion), or a new low ratio of 0.73 percent of the overall loans, compared with a ratio of 0.78 percent a month earlier, the Financial Supervisory Commission said in a report yesterday.
None of the 37 domestic lenders had a bad loan ratio higher than 2.5 percent, indicating that all banks have maintained healthy asset qualities, the financial regulator said.
Total outstanding loans amounted to NT$19.60 trillion as of Oct. 31, picking up NT$100.7 billion from the end of September, the commission said. The coverage ratio climbed to 135.83 percent at the end of last month, from 128.91 percent a month earlier, the commission said.
NT dollar falls slightly
The New Taiwan dollar fell against the US dollar yesterday, down NT$0.05 to close at NT$30.850.
Turnover totaled US$730 million during the trading session.
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