Bourse stages rebound
The local bourse staged a mild technical rebound yesterday as stiff technical resistance ahead of the 7,800-point mark limited the upside in market movement, dealers said.
Driven by ample liquidity, select large cap high-tech stocks attracted buying to give the market a boost, while some firms in the Apple supply chain moved higher after iPhone 5, the newest version of Apple’s smartphone went on sale in a number of countries, they said.
The weighted index closed up 27.04 points, or 0.34 percent, at 7,754.59, on turnover of NT$83.27 billion (US$2.84 billion).
“The market has fallen into a ranged movement after a recent strong showing on the Fed Reserve’s third round of quantitative easing,” Hua Nan Securities (華南永昌證券) analyst Stan Chang said.
Chipmaker signs agreement
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 2 contract chipmaker, said yesterday its has signed an agreement with Allegro MicroSystems, Inc, a leader in developing, manufacturing and marketing high-performance semiconductors, to supply its chips.
The companies will start production with Allegro’s fourth generation 0.6um BCD (ABCD4) commercial product line later this year, the companies said in a joint statement.
Allegro has finished porting its ABCD4 process to UMC and has entered pilot production. Full production is expected to begin at UMC within the coming months. This wafer process will support its commercial power IC customers.
In addition, Allegro is also porting its sixth generation ABCD6 process, with pilot production expected to start next year. This process will support both sensor and power IC customers.
Service provider raises funds
State-run Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding Co (合作金控) said yesterday it successfully completed a capital increase plan, raising NT$17.77 billion (US$580 million) in new capital to strengthen its financial health.
The capital increase plan was carried out via issuance of 1.2 billion new common shares priced at NT$14.81 per share, the state-run lender said in a statement.
Taiwan Cooperative Financial issued 10 percent of the new shares in the open market, while original shareholders and employees subscribed 75 percent and 15 percent respectively, the statement said.
Ministry to issue bonds
The Ministry of Finance announced yesterday that it would issue NT$130 billion of government bonds during the fourth quarter, with most of them set to refinance old government debt.
The planned fourth-quarter bond sales will be 4 percent higher than the NT$125 billion sold in the current quarter, but 7.14 percent less than the NT$140 billion sold in the fourth quarter of last year, ministry data showed.
Adding the planned bond sales in the fourth quarter, the ministry is set to sell a record-high of NT$665 billion of government bonds this year, from last year’s sales of NT$620 billion, for finance old debt and build infrastructure.
NT dollar continues run
The New Taiwan dollar completed a fifth weekly gain, the longest winning streak in seven months, as monetary easing in the US and Japan spurred demand for emerging-market assets.
The NT dollar rose 0.1 percent this week and 0.2 percent yesterday to NT$29.45 against its US counterpart, according to Taipei Forex Inc. The currency has gained 1.8 percent this month. Turnover amounted US$669 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
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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