Major investors flood TAIEX
Almost 80 percent of major players in the local bourse have returned to the trading floor, a development that could further raise market turnover and make trading more active, Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Chairman William Tseng (曾銘宗) said yesterday.
On the sidelines of a cross-strait financial market seminar, Tseng said that to his knowledge, more than 850 major market players had jumped onto the trading floor as of the end of last month, a level that is almost 80 percent of the historic peak of 1,100 investors.
The market defines “major players” as investors whose trade stocks are valued at no less than NT$500 million (US$16.67 million) a quarter.
The TAIEX has gained about 9.06 percent since the beginning of the year and yesterday closed at 9,391.88 points.
FSC clears acquisition plans
The (FSC) yesterday approved plans by China Development Financial Holding Co (中華開發金控) to acquire Cosmos Bank (萬泰銀行) for NT$23.09 billion through a share-swap scheme.
In addition, the regulator gave President Securities Corp (統一證券) the go-ahead to take over Standard Chartered Taiwan’s securities brokerage business for NT$685.6 million.
The acquisitive moves could help China Development Financial and President boost earnings and customers as fierce competition squeezes profitability in the local banking and brokerage sectors, the commission said.
Most first buyers get help: poll
More than half of the nation’s first-time home buyers need financial assistance from their families to buy a property, the results of a poll released yesterday showed.
The survey, conducted by real-estate agency Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋), found that 55.94 percent of respondents buying their first homes get help from their families in the form of loans (34.75 percent), or inheritance (11.02 percent), while the remainder (10.17 percent) said they received all or part of the money for their homes as gifts.
More than 25 percent said they managed to pay the property’s down payment on their own, while another 18.64 percent said they did so with help from their spouses.
Hon Hai staffer dies in China
A 22-year-old male Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) employee was found dead outside the company’s manufacturing campus in the Chinese city of Shenzhen on Sunday, the company said in a statement yesterday.
The cause of death was not immediately known, the company said in the statement, adding that it was working with all concerned authorities.
Hon Hai is a major assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhone and iPad products. It has struggled with a spate of employee suicides at its Chinese plants in recent years.
Asustek targets fair sales boost
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) on Monday said it expects the total sales revenue of its products at the Taipei Computer Applications Show to grow by at least 30 percent annually on the back of solid demand for its low-cost ZenFone range and the Transformer Book T100 — a hybrid device that functions both as a tablet and a laptop.
However, that target appears somewhat conservative compared with the about 50 percent sales growth Asustek recorded last year at one of the major consumer electronics exhibitions in Taiwan.
The trade show opens tomorrow and run through Monday next week at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall 1.
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