TAIEX edges up
The TAIEX ended little changed yesterday as investors remained cautious ahead of the US Federal Reserve’s two-day policymaking meeting, dealers said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the most weighted stock in Taiwan’s market, staged a technical rebound to offset the weakness of “Apple concept stocks,” which were hurt by a fall in Apple’s share price on Wall Street overnight, they said.
The weighted index closed up 4.19 points, or 0.06 percent, at 7,613.69, on turnover of NT$84.59 billion (US$2.91 billion).
Adobe closes sales office
Adobe Systems Inc, maker of Photoshop and Acrobat software, closed its Taiwan sales office on Friday last week as part of the company’s reorganization.
“Upon careful and deliberate consideration of our business strategy in Asia Pacific, Adobe has made the decision to reorganize our business in the Greater China region. We will continue doing business in Taiwan through our local channel partners, supported by our Hong Kong sales office,” the company said in a statement released on Monday.
Frances Peng (彭鳳儀), Adobe’s Greater China communications manager, said the company has cut its work force in Taiwan from 14 to two, dismissing nine full-time employees and three contract workers.
Adobe’s products will continue to be sold through two local distributors — GrandTech C.G. Systems Inc (上奇) and Weblink International Inc (展碁), she said.
Tax warning for dual citizens
The enforcement of a capital gains tax on stock transactions next year will place an extra tax burden on people with dual US-Republic of China (ROC) citizenship, financial services company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said yesterday.
US nationals and people with US-ROC dual citizenship who conduct stock transactions in Taiwan will have to pay the capital gains tax when the tax goes into effect on Jan. 1, Wendy Chiu (邱文敏), a tax services partner at PwC Taiwan, said at a seminar.
However, for the long term, the tax is unlikely to have a great impact on such shareholders because the taxes they pay in countries outside the US can be seen as tax credits for their income tax in the US, Chiu said.
HP debuts data solution
Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) yesterday debuted a “converged storage” solution for local businesses to enhance efficiency of big data management and storage.
At a product launch in Taipei, the company said the coverage storage solution is a product mix of storage servers and platforms for enterprises in different sizes to manage data in a virtual environment with the latest cloud computing technologies.
DRAM chip prices rebound
Prices of DRAM chips on the spot market staged a strong rebound to hit a four-month high on the back of production capacity cuts, DRAMeXchange said in a report yesterday.
DRAMeXchange said the hikes in DRAM spot prices also reflected rising demand from tablet computer vendors that have enjoyed solid sales growth in China.
DRAMeXchange said the price of benchmark DDR3 2Gb chips this month rose to US$0.94, up 14.6 percent from US$0.82 recorded at the end of last month.
Given the strong price recovery in the spot market, it said contract prices for this month’s delivery are likely to stabilize.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, up NT$0.028 to close at NT$29.122. Turnover was US$666 million.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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