SMARTPHONES
Silitech to buy back shares
Handset keypad supplier Silitech Technology Corp (閎暉) yesterday said its board decided to implement a stock buyback plan beginning yesterday and running through July 21. Shares closed 1.32 percent higher at NT$23 yesterday before the company unveiled its buyback plan. The board has agreed to buy back up to 10 million shares, or 5.28 percent of total outstanding shares, at a price of NT$16.1 to NT$35.45 per share, Silitech said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company plans to spend up to NT$2.74 billion (US$89.7 million) on the buyback and will transfer the shares to employees in a bid to “boost employee morale,” the filing said.
RETAIL
Breeze Group founder dies
Upscale mall operator Breeze Group (微風集團) yesterday confirmed its founder and chairman Paul Liao (廖偉志) has died at the age of 67. Breeze executive director Henry Liao (廖鎮漢) said in a letter to company employees that his father died at home on Wednesday, attended by close family members. The group, which runs several Breeze Center (微風廣場) malls, said that Paul Liao died of an illness, but did not disclose further details.
INVESTMENT FUNDS
FSC’s Wang to chair TIGF
The semi-official Taiwan Insurance Guaranty Fund (TIGF, 保險安定基金) yesterday said its board decided to invite Financial Supervisory Commission Vice Chairwoman Jennifer Wang (王儷玲) to head the fund after former chairman Chu Yun-peng (朱雲鵬) completed his tenure on Thursday. The fund expects that, under Wang’s leadership, Cathay Life Insurance Co Ltd (國泰人壽) will be on track to complete its recent purchases of insolvent Global Life Insurance Co (國寶人壽) and Singfor Life Insurance Co (幸福人壽). Wang is also to help facilitate communications between the fund, the financial regulator and the local insurance industry, according to a TIGF statement.
BANKING
Dome exposure ‘manageable’
The Taipei City Government’s order to Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設) to shut down construction of the Taipei Dome this week is expected to create a negative sentiment for the financial sector in the near term, but potential earnings overhang for banks with credit exposure to the land developer is still manageable, JPMorgan Securities Ltd said in a note yesterday. JPMorgan said the syndicated loan of NT$15.4 billion from 11 banks led by Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行) is collateralized by the Taipei Dome itself and related surface rights. The brokerage said such credit exposure is, in general, less than 0.1 percent of the total loan, while a 100 percent provision is expected to affect no more than 10 percent of creditor banks’ earnings this year.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Industry continues to grow
The book-to-bill ratio for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers dropped to 1.04 last month as growth in billings surpassed bookings, semiconductor industry association SEMI said yesterday. This marked the fourth month this year that the ratio stood above one, indicating the industry is still growing. The three-month average of worldwide bookings expanded 12.9 percent to US$1.57 billion last month, from US$1.39 billion in March, SEMI’s data showed. The three-month average of worldwide billings jumped 19.3 percent to US$1.51 billion last month from US$1.27 billion in the prior month.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
Taiwan’s long-term economic competitiveness will hinge not only on national champions like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) but also on the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, a US-based scholar has said. At a lecture in Taipei on Tuesday, Jeffrey Ding, assistant professor of political science at the George Washington University and author of "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers," argued that historical experience shows that general-purpose technologies (GPTs) — such as electricity, computers and now AI — shape long-term economic advantages through their diffusion across the broader economy. "What really matters is not who pioneers
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
China Vanke Co (萬科), China’s last major developer to have so far avoided default amid an unprecedented property crisis, has been left with little time to keep debt failure at bay after creditors spurned its proposal to push back a looming bond payment. Once China’s biggest homebuilder by sales, Vanke failed to obtain sufficient support for its plan to delay paying the 2 billion yuan (US$283.51 million) note due today, a filing to the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors showed late on Saturday. The proposal, along with two others on the ballot, would have allowed a one-year extension. All three
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