■ Renesas to boost chips
Renesas Technology Corp, a chipmaking venture between Hitachi Ltd and Mitsubishi Electric Corp, said it will almost triple its production capacity of memory chips used in digital cameras and mobile phones by March 2005. Renesas will increase monthly capacity of flash memory chips that hold the equivalent of 1 gigabit of data to 5 million units, from 1.8 million now, the Tokyo-based company said in a faxed press release.
Renesas yesterday licensed Taiwan-based Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體) to make AG-AND chips as part of the move to increase capacity, the Japanese chipmaker said in the release, without disclosing monetary terms. Powerchip will start producing the chips in the first half ending Sept. 30 next year, it said.
■ Samsung to share clients
Samsung Securities Co, South Korea's biggest brokerage by market share, said it and Fubon Securities Co (富邦證券) will market their research to each other's clients and combine domestic trading and settlement services.
Seoul-based Samsung will sign a contract in New York tomorrow with Fubon as part of a drive to expand out of its domestic market, company spokesman Kim Jin Ho said.
The alliance is "to offer a wider, in-depth service to customers investing in emerging Asian markets, including Korea and Taiwan," Kim said.
Samsung, which has 9.5 percent of the South Korean broking market, has been hiring staff in New York, London and Hong Kong, as well as opening an office in Shanghai.
The alliance between Fubon and Samsung may create "a strong North Asian player" in financial services, FinanceAsia.com said on its Web site earlier when it reported the move.
Fubon has a 6.8 percent share of the Taiwanese broking market, the report said.
■ SinoPac prefers merger
SinoPac Holdings Co (建華金控), Taiwan's 10th-largest financial holding company by market value, said it prefers to merge with a domestic rival to increase its size and reach rather than being taken over.
The company, which is one-third owned by foreign investors, last week said it hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc as a financial adviser to find merger partners at home and overseas.
"We would like to team up with rival, preferably a domestic one, in any future possible merger," Paul Lo (盧正昕), president of SinoPac, told reporters in Taipei. "We hope the two parties can share the same vision and jointly manage the newly merged unit."
■ Export zones on the up
The Export Processing Zones Administration of the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday in Kaohsiung that great efforts have been made by the administration to make investment in the processing zones more profitable.
A spokesman for the administration said much has been done to improve infrastructure and help investors upgrade or transform their business operations. Bilingual schools have been established for children of foreign and overseas Chinese experts working for companies in the zones. The administration has also taken a number of new steps to help investors lower their production costs.
As a result, he said, investment in the export processing zones has increased significantly. New investment in the first 10 months of this year amounted to NT$24.27 billion (US$710 million), a hike of 50.61 percent over the same period of last year.
■ NT dollar stays unchanged
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday maintained unchanged against its US counterpart on the Taipei foreign exchange market, closing at NT$34.024.
Turnover was US$322 million.
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