■ Acer to reduce BenQ stake
Acer Inc, the world's fourth-largest branded personal computer vendor, said yesterday that it plans to release 50 million shares in handset maker BenQ Corp (明基) through global depository receipts (GDR). After the sale, Acer's stake in BenQ will be reduced to about five percent from the current 7.2 percent to become the second largest shareholder, next to flat panel display maker AU Optronics Corp's (友達光電) 5.2 percent, an Acer official said. However, no timetable for the sale has been set, the official said. Last December, Acer sold 50 million BenQ shares via a GDR issue. BenQ, a supplier of computer, communications and consumer electronics products, acquired Siemens' mobile phone handset business last year, making itself the world's fourth-largest mobile handset maker and the leader in the greater China region.
■ CPC discovers gas
Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油) has discovered undersea natural gas off the coast of Kaohsiung and is expected to begin mass production of gas from the field beginning 2009, CPC officials said yesterday. The CPC is drilling 10 wells in an area about 100km from Kaohsiung to explore the gas field, which is assessed to contain enough for commercial exploration for 10 years, said Lee Tsung-lung (李宗龍), a deputy CEO of the CPC's Natural Gas Division. The CPC will also build a 120km undersea pipeline to convey the natural gas to a refinery in Yungan (永安) in Kaohsiung County, Lee said. AT present CPC imports liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Indonesia and Malaysia to meet domestic demand. CPC plans to almost triple its LNG import capacity by 2020 to meet rising demand for the fuel, CPC vice president Lin Cheng-hsiung (林正雄) said yesterday. The state-run company will have the facilities to receive 21 million tonnes of LNG by the end of the next decade, Lin said. CPC plans to expand annual capacity of the Yungan terminal, the only one in Taiwan, to 12 million tonnes, Lin said. CPC will also expand a second terminal the company is building in Taichung harbor, which is due to start operations in 2008 and projected to reach an annual capacity of 3 million tonnes in 2010, Lin said. Taiwan aims to increase natural gas consumption to 16 million tonnes a year by 2020 to cut emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, since the fuel produces less pollution than coal and oil.
■ VIA wins Samsung contract
VIA Technologies Inc (威盛電子), the nation's biggest maker of personal computer chipsets, secured a contract to make computer chips for Samsung Electronics Co, the Chinese-language Commercial Times said, without saying where it got the information. The chips are for Samsung's scaled-down notebook computers, which are expected to roll out in the market in the second half of this year, the newspaper said. It didn't say how much the order is worth. Samsung and rivals such as Intel Corp are planning to sell scaled-down laptop computers to get customers to buy an additional machine. Boosted by the news, shares of VIA rose by the 7 percent daily limit to close at NT$28.7 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
■ NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.021 to close at NT$32.460. A total of US$860 million changed hands during the day's trading.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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