Julius Chen promoted
Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) yesterday promoted Julius Chen (陳淮舟), formerly chairman of its subsidiary Taishin Bills Finance Corp (台新票券) as its new president of the financial holding company.
Chen, 63, replaced Steve Shieh (謝壽夫), who was appointed by the Ministry of Finance to take over the chairmanship of First Financial Holding Co (第一金控) on Thursday.
Chen is a former president of Taishi Commercial Bank (台新銀行)and former chief financial officer at Taiwan High-Speed Railway Co (台灣高鐵).
He was later recruited back to assist Taishi chairman Thomas Wu (吳東亮) with the start-up of the new financial holding company.
New tourist-train line opens
The South Bend Star tourist train linking Kaohsiung to Taitung made its maiden trip yesterday.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Ling-san (林陵三) said at an inaugural ceremony that the start of the new train service marks the completion of a round-the-island train program.
The tourist-train service is in line with the government's plan to double tourist arrivals to the country by 2008, Lin said.
As part of the program, the Taipei-Fangliao Kenting Star (墾丁之星) and the Taipei-Taitung Hot Spring Princess (溫泉公主號) began service earlier this year.
The South Bend Star will make stops at Pingtung, Fangliao and Chipen along the way from Kaohsiung to Taitung.
The Taiwan Railway Administration will work with travel agents in organizing one-day tour packages to attract southern residents to sightseeing spots in Taitung County, an official said.
Vodafone takes buying stake
Vodafone Group Plc, the world's biggest mobile-phone operator, will take a 5 percent stake in Taiwan Cellular Corp (台灣大哥大), a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information.
Taiwan Cellular's acting chairman Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) wants Vodafone's management to help improve results, the report said.
International rivalry is increasing in Taiwan as NTT DoCoMo Inc builds ties with Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), which acquired KG Telecommunications Co (和信電訊), the report said.
Taiwan Cellular, the nation's biggest mobile-phone operator, declined to comment on the report.
"It is not our practice to comment on market rumors,"Taiwan Cellular said in a statement. "It is only natural that we have ongoing communications with international telecom companies."
Taiwan Cellular said on July 31 that it it would unwind cross-shareholdings, sell a stake in a rival and may merge with a unit as it reorganizes to improve profits and attract investors.
NT dollar posts weekly gain
The NT dollar rounded out its second week of gains on trader speculation of overseas fund manager demand for the currency after they bought more of the nation's stocks this week than in almost two months.
Global investors purchased a net NT$27 billion (US$786 million) of equities this week, the most since the week ended June 20.
The NT dollar rose 0.2 percent this week, closing at NT$34.358 against its US counterpart yesterday at the Taipei foreign exchange market on a turnover of US$433.5 billion. The close was the strongest since July 10.
"There are some overseas investors bringing money in," said Jerry Ho, a foreign exchange trader at International Bank of Taipei (台北商銀).
"The big gains in the stock market" spurred expectations there will be more demand for NT dollars, he said.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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