Shares close 2.55% higher
Taiwanese shares finished 2.55 percent higher yesterday following Wall Street’s overnight rally and a government plan to help the ailing construction industry, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 105.95 points at 4,266.49 on turnover of NT$56.96 billion (US$1.7 billion).
Advancers outnumbered losers 977 to 371, while 319 stocks were unchanged.
Construction outperformed the broader market, surging 4.83 percent on reports that in a meeting with domestic land developers, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) agreed to help the sector amid the global financial turmoil.
Memory chip prices drop
Benchmark computer memory chip prices fell another 6.9 percent last week to a new low as output reduction failed to ease a supply glut, bringing the overall decline in the current quarter to 34 percent, Taipei-based researcher DRAMeXchange Technology Inc (集邦科技) said in the report yesterday.
Prices are likely to continue to drop next month as PC demand is expected to weaken during the traditionally slack fourth quarter, DRAMeXchange said.
The benchmark price for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips fell to US$0.81 per unit last week.
Fast food chain hopes to grow
Top Philippine fast food chain Jollibee Foods Corp said yesterday it would acquire a 70 percent stake in the Lao Dong (老董) group of Taiwan as part of an expansion drive.
Its wholly owned unit Jollibee Worldwide Pte Ltd will pay NT$42 million next month to the owners and invest another NT$21 million in the joint venture, the listed parent company told the Philippine Stock Exchange.
Lao Dong’s present owners will also invest NT$9 million in the business.
“The joint venture was entered into to pursue the operation and further expansion of the Lao Dong business in Taiwan and the introduction of the business into the People’s Republic of China,” the Jollibee statement said.
Lao Dong, which has eight stores and a commissary in Taipei, has annual sales of NT$121.6 million, it said.
CMP calls off property auction
The Central Motion Picture Co (CMP, 中央電影公司) yesterday called off an auction scheduled for today to liquidate its New World Building (新世界大樓) near Ximen MRT station, auction organizer DTZ Debenham Tie Leung International Property Advisers (戴德梁行) said in an e-mailed statement
The property was to have a floor price of NT$2 billion.
The company will reschedule the auction once the market environment is more positive, the statement said.
The property adviser said that many potential buyers had complained about the floor price.
Cross-strait deal expected
Taiwan and China are likely to sign a financial services agreement in the first half of next year, said Susan Chang (張秀蓮), chairwoman of government-owned Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控), who is also the head of the Bankers Association of the ROC (銀行公會).
“The signing of a memorandum of understanding will open up many opportunities for Taiwanese financial institutions,” Chang said yesterday in Beijing, where she is attending a cross-strait financial forum.
NT dollar gains ground
The NT dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.069 to close at NT$33.352.
A total of US$622 million changed hands during trading.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
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