FSC inks MOU with Dubai
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on financial supervision and cooperation with the Dubai Financial Services Authority.
The pact was signed by commission Chairman Gordon Chen (陳樹) and Dubai Financial Services Authority Chief Executive David Knott, the commission said.
It expects the MOUs to help ensure investors’ interests and help facilitate Taiwanese financial institutions’ overseas business development, the statement said.
Asian credit solid: Moody’s
Asian governments’ guarantees of bank deposits are unlikely to hurt their credit ratings because the sovereigns have enough fiscal strength to absorb any losses, Moody’s Investors Service said yesterday.
Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia extended deposit safeguards last month to shore up confidence as global bank losses widened. Hong Kong’s three-month interbank rate has fallen to 2.55 percent, almost half the level when the central bank made its pledge on Oct. 14.
“All of these countries have current account surpluses and are net creditor nations with substantial foreign currency reserves,” Moody’s said in a report.
Chunghwa cuts Internet fees
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) said yesterday it planned to cut its charges for Internet access by an average of nearly 9 percent to help customers reduce their expenses.
The phone company cut the charge for high-speed Internet access via fiber optical by 15.38 percent from NT$650 a month to NT$550.
While the company planned to cut its monthly charge for its ADSL service enabling downloading speed of 2 megabyte per second by 3 percent from NT$440 to NT$429. The 2M users make up the biggest portion of the company’s 4.32 million Internet access subscribers.
The new price tariff will take effect later this month.
Foreign reserves shrink
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves shrank by another US$2.98 billion to US$278.15 billion at the end of last month on continued foreign capital outflows, the central bank said yesterday.
Despite the drop, Taiwan’s reserves are still the fourth largest in the world, next only to China, Japan and Russia.
Lin Sun-yuan (林孫源), deputy director-general of the central bank’s department of foreign exchange, said there were large foreign capital inflows at the end of last month, but they failed to offset outflows earlier in the month.
Lin said the monthly figure also marked an increase of US7.84 billion from a year ago.
Computer viruses up 20 fold
Trend Micro Inc (趨勢科技), the world’s leading anti-virus software provider, said yesterday that the growth of computer viruses has increased by 20 fold since 2005. The firm said a new virus surfaces every four seconds, making it next to impossible to ward off attacks.
“Rather than destroying your computer and causing havoc in your life, computer hackers now are only interested in profiteering from stolen personal information,” Bob Hung (洪偉金), general manager at Trend Micro business unit, told a media briefing.
The software developer said it utilized cloud computing to store its multi-layer protection remotely in “the clouds,” which saved 70 percent of users’ computer space.
NT dollar gains
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.039 to close at NT$32.830. A total of US$1.24 billion changed hands.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
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