For the fourth consecutive year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufac-turing Co (TSMC, 台積電) outperformed 630 Taiwan-listed companies to grab the Investor Relations (IR) magazine award for best investor services in the country, according to survey results released last week.
"The award will compel us to do a better job in providing investors, big or small, with complete access to company information," TSMC spokesman Tzeng Jinnhaw (曾晉皓) said yesterday.
In second and third place were Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (
"[Through IR service], not only can Chinatrust Financial's corporate value be presented but investors can also deliver their opinions to us, which has become a driving force behind our future development," Lin Shiaw-ping (林孝平), Chinatrust Financial's chief strategic officer, said yesterday.
Foreign investors currently hold more than a 50 percent share of the company.
The magazine conducted 475 phone interviews, including 35 in Taiwan, in 10 Asian countries during August and September before tallying the overall results. The respondents were primarily portfolio managers, buy-side analysts and sell-side analysts, all of whom were asked to nominate leading companies -- both overall and country-specific -- in the most important areas of investor relations activities.
The magazine developed a ranking system to credit a company with five points for every mention as best in a category, and three points for every mention of second-best.
TSMC was declared to be the winner in the Taiwan-specific category with 132 points, followed by Chinatrust Financial's 21 points and Formosa Plastics' 18 points.
When stacked up against three other Asian companies, the contract chipmaker also rated second-best in board communications, behind Singapore Telecommunications Inc (SingTel).
TSMC ranked sixth among Asian companies in organizing roadshows and investment meetings.
For small or midcap companies (defined as those with a market capitalization below US$1 billion), another Taiwanese company -- Asustek Computer Inc (
"It provides information very honestly and is willing to see clients at lunches and conferences," the magazine quoted one respondent as saying about Asustek.
"It provides updated information and has well-briefed investor-relations staff," another respondent said.
The survey also probed the current state of the investor relations field, to discover which countries had most improved, which were still in need of improvement and which were the most important to institutional investors in Asia.
According to the survey's findings, China, the Philippines and Taiwan are this year's least improved, with only 69 percent of respondents saying investor relations are improving -- down from 80 percent in China and Philippines last year, and 83 percent in Taiwan.
Slightly disagreeing with the finding, Morgan Stanley executive director Gary Kuo (郭冠群) said more and more Taiwanese companies are making efforts to improve their investor relations as well as corporate governance, to prevent their respective share prices from being undervalued.
The winner in the "most improved" category was Indonesia, which showed a big turnaround from last year when it was rated worst in the category. This year 100 percent of respondents agreed that the country's investor relations had improved.
Respondents felt that for Asian companies, transparency, sensibility to information needs, results announcements and the number of personal interactions had all greatly improved.
The frequency of interactions was seen as the most important quality to ensure the investment community is well served.
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
RSS