BANKING
‘Hidden champions’ targeted
State-run Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding Co (TCFH, 合庫金控) on Thursday expanded into the investment banking business by setting up a venture capital company with a view to boosting synergy benefits and its customer base. The new subsidiary will target the nation’s “hidden champions,” or small and medium-sized enterprises that possess unique competitive edges, but lack access to sufficient funding to strengthen business, TCFH chairman Liao Tsan-chang (廖燦昌) said in a statement. Dai Teng-shan (戴燈山), a vice president at the group’s banking arm Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合庫銀行), will concurrently serve as the chairman of the venture capital unit, the statement said.
MACROECONOMICS
Taiwan gets GEI nod
Taiwan has been ranked sixth out of 132 countries in the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) for next year, two places up from last year. Taiwan also led Asian countries as the most attractive place in the region to launch a start-up in the new year, according to the annual report released yesterday by the US-based Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute. The US came in first in the report, followed by Canada, Australia, Denmark and Sweden. Taiwan has been included in the countries assessed by the non-profit institute since the 2012 report.
COMPONENTS
Sercomm nets record profit
Telecoms equipment maker Sercomm Corp (中磊) yesterday reported a record profit of NT$440 million (US$13.37 million) for last quarter, up 84 percent from a year earlier, supported by rising demand for fiber optical products, cable equipment and Internet of Things devices. In the first three quarters, net income surged 35 percent year-on-year to NT$935 million, with earnings per share of NT$4.01 per share. Sercomm shipped more than 20 million units of broadband equipment in the first three quarters and said it is optimistic about its business this quarter.
REAL ESTATE
Shin Kong ‘not rushing’ sale
Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) said it still plans to liquidate the A8 commercial complex in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) when the markets are more favorable, after the company failed to sell off the asset last month. The A8 building, owned by the company’s life insurance unit, Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), houses a branch of the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store (新光三越百貨) chain. “We collect about NT$690 million in rent annually from A8, and the figure is expected to increase to NT$750 million in two years, therefore, we are not in a hurry to sell,” Shin Kong Financial vice chairman and president Victor Hsu (許澎) said on Thursday.
BANKING
SinoPac’s income tumbles
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) on Thursday reported that its net income in the first nine months had tumbled 20.7 percent year-on-year to NT$8.95 billion, or NT$0.88 per share, as its holdings of yuan-denominated assets were hit hard by the Chinese currency’s depreciation and Beijing’s decision to cut interest rates. Looking ahead, the company said it is to shift focus from China to Hong Kong, where it will expand its brokerage business, and to Vietnam, where many Taiwanese companies have continued to set up operations. SinoPac Financial said business fundamentals would gradually turn better as overall economic conditions are expected to improve.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li