■ Economy
Minister visits Swaziland
Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) left for Swaziland yesterday for the 10th Taiwan-Swaziland meeting on economic cooperation slated for tomorrow and Tuesday. The meeting is aimed at boosting economic relations between the two countries. Swaziland is one of Taiwan's key economic and trade partners in southern Africa. Two-way trade reached US$23.23 million last year between the two countries, up from US$2.7 million in 2000. In the January-October period this year, bilateral trade between the two amounted to US$24.23 million, posing a year-on-year growth of 22 percent.
■ Microchips
UMC sells ProMOS shares
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world's second-largest supplier of made-to-order chips, said it sold some of the ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德) shares it has been buying since July. The Hsinchu-based company sold 42.38 million ProMOS shares, representing a 0.7 percent stake, for NT$610.3 million (US$19 million), UMC said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange late on Friday. The stock was sold between Nov. 15 and Friday at an average price of NT$14.4 per share, a profit of NT$60.7 million, the statement said. The sale was a "financial arrangement," the statement said, without elaborating. UMC still holds an 8 percent stake of ProMOS, it said. ProMOS is Taiwan's third-largest maker of computer memory chips.
■ Economy
Beijing tries to cool off
China's central bank confirmed yesterday that it has told banks to buy the 160 billion yuan (US$20 billion) bond issue in the government's latest effort to rein in a lending boom and cool off the sizzling economy, a state news agency reported. The latest order applied to 20 institutions, including the top five state-owned banks and 10 other commercial banks, the Xinhua news agency said. So far this year, China's central bank has issued 410 billion yuan in bonds designated to reduce lending, Xinhua said.
■ Automobiles
Maker recalls Passat
Automaker Volkswagen on Friday ordered the recall of 300,000 of its Passat models worldwide owing to problems with the windshield wipers, fuel system and brakes. The models affected were produced since last year. In some, the electrical feed to the windshield wipers broke down when exposed to moisture during heavy rain, the German company said in a statement. In addition, diesel-powered vehicles must be inspected for a possible fuel leakage. And defective brakes were found in some models with 200 horsepower engine.
■ IPO
Port builder sells shares
China Communications Construction Co (中國交通建設), the country's largest port builder, raised HK$16.1 billion (US$2.1 billion) in its Hong Kong initial public offering, bankers involved in the sale said. The company sold 3.5 billion new shares, representing a 24.5 percent stake, at HK$4.60 apiece, the top end of the range offered to investors earlier, the two bankers said, asking not to be identified before a company announcement. Demand for orders from institutional investors amounted to US$162 billion, the bankers said. China Communications controls 90 percent of the market to design and build ports in China and has a 74 percent share of the global quayside crane market, according to research by the sale's arrangers.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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