RATINGS
Nation’s BSRI ranking up
Taiwan has moved up one notch to seventh in the latest quarterly BlackRock Sovereign Risk Index (BSRI) and finished second among Asian countries behind Singapore. The three countries deemed to have the lowest sovereign risk in the first quarter survey were Norway, Singapore and Switzerland. Within Asia, Taiwan trailed only Singapore, and finished ahead of South Korea (13th), Malaysia (16th), China (17th), Philippines (24th), Thailand (26th), Japan (33rd) and Indonesia (36th).
FINANCE
Bond funds green-lit
Fubon Asset Management Co (富邦投信) yesterday said it had obtained a green light from the Financial Supervisory Commission to raise two Chinese yuan-denominated bond funds in Taiwan between June 17 and June 21. The fundraising ceiling for each of the two funds has been set at 5 billion yuan (US$806 million), it said.
AVIATION
Open skies talks set
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Bill Cho (卓士昭) said on Monday at a bilateral trade meeting in Ottawa that Taiwan and Canada will conduct open skies talks next month. Cho said the Civil Aeronautics Administration is scheduled to send a delegation to Canada next month for talks on deregulation of the aviation sector and creating more of a free-market environment for airlines.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by