■ TAIEX rides US wave
The TAIEX rose yesterday after gains in US peers underpinned optimism that growth in the industry will help boost earnings.
The index added 172.76, or 3.1 percent, to 5,729.30. TAIEX futures for July delivery gained 2.2 percent to 5,660.
Financial shares advanced for a second day after Morgan Stanley Capital International Inc said it will give full weight to the nation's stocks in global indexes.
Foreign investors as of Monday held 12.3 percent of financial stocks, which as a group have a 20.7 percent representation in the TAIEX, according to statistics from the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Procomp Informatics Co (博達科技) fell 6.6 percent to NT$6.40. Stock regulators will suspend trading of the stock today after the company failed to explain why it defaulted on a bond payment due last Thursday.
■ Phone camera modules up
Taiwanese mobile phone camera module shipments are expected to reach approximately 73 million units this year, the Market Intelligence Center (市場情報中心) said in a statement yesterday.
Growing 5.5-fold from 13 million units last year, Taiwanese camera modules are predicted to comprise 40 percent of the global market, the research house said.
Built-in camera modules are anticipated to account for roughly 90 percent of Taiwanese shipments this year, compared to about 60 percent last year. Attachment modules comprised 40 percent of 2003 volume.
■ Compal tops pay list
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦) pays its board members the most of all listed companies in the country, a Chinese-language newspaper said, citing statistics collected from annual reports.
The average pay for Compal's board is NT$203.6 million (US$6 million), followed by NT$169.6 million for Pou Chen Corp (寶成) and NT$127.8 million for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the report said.
Next on the list were Inventec Co (英業達), Far Eastern Textile Ltd (遠東紡織) and China Steel Corp (中鋼), the paper reported.
Compal, the world's second-largest maker of notebook computers, increased its net income by 43 percent last year to NT$11.3 billion from a year earlier.
■ Banks' NPL ratios improve
Taiwanese banks have improved their performance by lowering their non-performing loan (NPL) ratios in the year's first quarter, the central bank said.
Domestic banks posted an average NPL ratio of 4.4 percent for the year's first three months, the central bank's statistics showed.
Some banks in charge of special designations have outperformed general commercial banks. The Export-Import Bank (進出口銀行) registered the lowest NPL ratio with 0.37 percent for the same period, while the China Development Industrial Bank's (中華開發) ratio was 1.66 percent.
At the same time, privately-run banks performed better than state-controlled ones. E.Sun Bank (玉山銀行) and Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) recorded NPL ratios of 1.42 percent and 1.5 percent respectively.
State-run banks such as Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) posted 2.98 percent, while Medium Business Bank of Taiwan (中小企銀) and Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) had higher ratios of 10.35 percent and 5.92 percent.
■ NT dollar down
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.050 to close at NT$33.780 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$619 million.
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