FINANCIAL SERVICES
CDFHC’s Wang to retire
China Development Financial Holding Corp (CDFHC, 中華開發金控) yesterday announced that its president and chief executive officer Alan Wang (王銘陽) had applied to retire on March 4. The company did not say who would assume Wang’s positions, as that would depend on an election to be held by its board of directors, CDFHC said in a regulatory filing. Wang has also applied to step down as chairman of China Life Insurance Co Ltd (中國人壽), a subsidiary in which CDFHC has a 35 percent stake, effective March 4, a separate filing said. CDFHC posted net income of NT$12.85 billion (US$425.4 million) last year, a 64 percent year-on-year increase and the highest level in 13 years, on the back of improving business at its banking, insurance and brokerage units.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
Yuanta risk officer replaced
Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) yesterday announced a change of chief risk officer at subsidiary Yuanta Life Insurance Co (元大人壽), effective Feb. 16. The company has appointed Su Yi-liang (蘇益良), vice president of Yuanta Commercial Bank (元大銀行), another subsidiary, to replace Guo Xuan-min (郭軒岷) as the chief risk officer of the insurance unit, a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange said. Guo also serves as senior vice president of Yuanta Life.
INSURANCE
Hotai fined NT$600,000
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the local sales agent for Toyota and Lexus vehicles, yesterday said its insurance unit, Hotai Insurance Co (和泰產險), had been handed an administrative fine of NT$600,000 by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) due to “irregularities.” “Hotai Insurance was found to have contravened the Insurance Act (保險法) when the FSC conducted a global travel insurance inspection,” the parent company said in a regulatory filing. Hotai Insurance would take actions to rectify the irregularities, the filing said.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Global chip sales slump
The semiconductor industry last year suffered its worst annual slump in almost two decades, hurt by a trade dispute between the world’s largest chip producer, the US, and its largest consumer, China. Revenue fell 12 percent to US$412 billion last year, the Semiconductor Industry Association said in a statement on Monday. That was the biggest drop since 2001, when sales slumped 32 percent after the dotcom bubble burst. The decline last year abated when sales grew slightly in the fourth quarter from the preceding three-month period, the industry association said. For that to continue, China and the US would need to build on the “phase one” trade agreement they signed last month, it said.
AUTOMAKERS
China auto sales plummet
China’s auto sales are likely to slump the most on record in the first two months of this year as the 2019 novel coronavirus keeps buyers away from showrooms, intensifying headwinds for automakers in the world’s largest market. Sales are set to fall by between 25 and 30 percent in the first two months of the year, China Passenger Car Association secretary-general Cui Dongshu (崔東樹) said yesterday. The coronavirus outbreak would likely drag China’s full-year auto sales down by as much as 5 percent, Cui said. “China’s auto industry has never had to factor in so many negative issues — the challenges have been piling up,” he said. “It will take months for economic activity to return to normal.”
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