The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday urged investors to remain calm after the TAIEX plunged and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded the US’ credit rating last week, citing good business performances from listed companies.
The central bank yesterday also asked investors not to panic over the US credit downgrade, saying the S&P’s credit rating was subjective.
In a statement issued yesterday, the FSC said listed companies reported a total NT$1.64 trillion (US$56.59 billion) in revenue last month, up 2.88 percent from the previous month.
In the first half of this year, accumulated revenue from listed companies totaled NT$8.48 trillion, up 4 percent from a year earlier, the statement said.
In an attempt to reassure investors that local stock markets remain stable, the FSC said both margin trading and short selling have as yet shown no warning signs.
Based on the commission’s latest data, margin loans dropped by NT$13.1 billion to NT$263.5 billion on Friday from NT$276.6 billion on Monday last week, while the collateral maintenance ratio for margin trading remained at 148.54 percent, relatively safe from the regulatory threshold of 120 percent and posing no immediate threat of margin calls.
In addition, short sales of NT$2.4 billion worth of stocks on Friday accounted for merely 1.5 percent of the NT$162.6 billion overall transactions on that day, and that ratio was not much different from an average 1.53 percent since the beginning of the year, the commission said.
The central bank also issued a statement yesterday to remind the public that ratings issued by the credit rating agencies — be it S&P, Moody’s or Fitch — were only for reference and investors should not be overly reliant on these ratings reports.
“Take Spain as an example. The country has been offered a rating higher than Taiwan, Japan and China, indicating that ratings agencies’ reports are subjective and cannot truly reflect a country’s actual scale of economy, nor the depth of a country’s financial market and its debt capacity,” the bank said.
Poland is betting on a flood of investments and technology transfers from Taiwanese companies to reengineer its US$1 trillion economy. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said yesterday that Poland will no longer be “just an assembly hub” as it pursues further investments from the likes of Foxconn Technology Group (富士康). The firm, whose full name is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), last month agreed to build electric vehicles (EVs) in the European Union nation and now could be a partner in a semiconductor venture, he said. The government’s aim is to boost manufacturing and the country’s high-tech chops in an era
Taiwan remained the sixth-largest net creditor nation in the world last year, despite a fall of more than 10 percent in its net international investment position (NIIP) over the year, the central bank said yesterday. The NIIP is the difference between a country’s external financial assets and its external financial liabilities. Taiwan’s external financial assets hit US$3.27 trillion at the end of last year, up US$275.75 billion or 9.2 percent from a year earlier, the central bank said in its annual NIIP report. The growth largely reflected an increase in holdings of overseas marketable securities by residents in Taiwan, as well as a
RESTRICTION BREACH: ASML said that it denies ‘unfounded rumors regarding non-compliance with export controls concerning China,’ and enforces controls strictly US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick in a series of recent meetings outlined concerns to Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML Holding NV’s senior leaders that one of its top-of-the-line machines might have made its way into China, in violation of US-led export restrictions. In the meetings, Lutnick expressed concern to ASML executives over the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, people familiar with the talks said. EUV systems are used by firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to manufacture processors for the likes of Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc. ASML has never been allowed to ship them to China because of curbs
BAD FAITH LITIGATION? The two companies, owned by a California-based private equity firm, could be seeking licensing fees or a settlement payout with the suit Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) Director-General Liao Cheng-wei (廖承威) said yesterday he suspected that two firms suing contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) for patent infringement are “patent trolls.” A patent troll refers to a company that buys patents not for manufacturing products, but to sue other companies for compensation, accusing them of using its patents. Patent trolls, formally called Non-Practicing Entities or Patent Assertion Entities, were responsible for more than 50 percent of lawsuits in the US last year, costing targeted businesses tens of billions of US dollars a year, according to the US-based LegalCharity Web site. Asked whether
RSS