Buyback rules tightened
Regulators have tightened rules governing banks and insurance companies who plan to buy back their own shares in a bid to guarantee their financial strength after the buyback is completed.
Bank and bills finance companies buying back their shares must have capital equal to more than 12 percent of their assets on completion of the buyback,the Financial Supervisory Commission said in a statement issued late Thursday.
Insurance companies who buy back their shares must have a capital adequacy ratio of more than 300 percent after the buyback is completed, while the ratio is more than 200 percent for brokerages.
For financial holding companies, the commission requires a capital adequacy ratio of more than 150 percent on completion of share buybacks. Banks planning buybacks must also have a bad-loan ratio of less than 2.5 percent, the statement said. The new rules are effective immediately.
Taishin buys into Truswell
Taishin Financial Holdings Co (台新金控), the owner of Taiwan's second-largest credit-card issuer, said it plans to acquire 82 percent of Truswell Securities Investment Trust Co (傳山投信) for NT$923 million (US$27.3 million).
Taishin Financial said its board approved the acquisition, according to a company statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. No other details were given.
``The purchase will help expand our business scope and enhance competitiveness, especially in the area of asset management,'' the statement said.
Truswell Investment Trust offers nine equity funds and three bond funds, according to the company's Web site.
ProMOS denies price fixing
ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), Taiwan's second largest memory-chip maker, said it wasn't involved in price fixing by parent Infineon Technologies AG.
"We are 100 percent clean," said Albert Lin (林育中), a ProMOS vice president. "We decided not to get involved in those discussions." Infineon, Europe's second-largest chipmaker, said it has set aside enough funds to settle additional antitrust probes and civil suits after agreeing to plead guilty in the US to fixing prices for memory chips.
Mosel Vitelic Inc (茂矽), Infineon's Taiwanese partner in ProMOS, in May 2002 said it agreed with rivals to withhold chips from the market, aiming to boost chip prices that fell by a third since mid-March 2002. In June the same year, the US Department of Justice started a probe into anti-competitive practices.
E-firms share NT$22billion
The scale of Taiwan's e-business market hit around NT$22 billion (US$647 million) last year, with the figure likely to reach NT$35.5 billion in 2005, according to a research institute forecast released yesterday.
The Market Information Center said that future sales through the Internet combined with "virtual shops" will be even better, as only 23 percent of Taiwan's cyber population shops online.
As of the end of last year, there were about 9 million Internet users in Taiwan, only 2.1 million of whom were online shoppers, according to the report.
An eBay Taiwan executive said that sales through a combination of the Internet and "virtual shops" will be the best way to sell both traditional and high-tech products.
NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday fell against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.034 to close at NT$33.868 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$639 million.
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