Bad loan ratio increases
The domestic banking sector’s ratio of bad loans, including loans under surveillance, edged up slightly to 1.63 percent in March, up 0.02 percentage points month-on-month, the Financial Supervisory Commission’s latest statistics showed yesterday.
Thirty-seven domestic banks loaned a total of NT$18.1 trillion (US$539 billion) at the end of March — a NT$120 billion drop from the previous month, NT$294.6 billion of which became non-performing loans (NPLs), the data showed.
Among them, Chinfon Commercial Bank (慶豐銀行) continued to hold the highest NPL ratio of 36.89 percent, followed by Bank of Panhsin’s (板信銀行) 4.77 percent, Cosmos Bank Taiwan’s (萬泰銀行) 4.57 percent, Jih Sun International Bank’s (日盛銀行) 4.03 percent and Citibank Taiwan Ltd’s (花旗台灣) 3.17 percent, while the remaining banks kept a NPL ratio of less than 3 percent.
7-Eleven opens in Shanghai
Shanghai’s first 7-Eleven store opened yesterday, adding to the more than 590 already established in China.
President Chain Store Corp (統一超商), the franchise holder, plans to have 300 7-Eleven stores in Shanghai in five years, spokeswoman Lillian Lin (林立莉) said.
President Chain said 7-Eleven has more than 35,000 stores in 24 countries. Beijing has 75 shops and the southern city of Guangzhou has 512, it said. President Chain runs about 4,800 7-Elevens in Taiwan.
Job-seekers favor Chunghwa
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) has emerged as the favorite place to find a job by Taiwan’s fresh job seekers, as the global economic downturn makes job security their top demand.
Cheers monthly magazine found in its latest poll that Chunghwa Telecom has for the first time become the company most coveted by fresh graduates of university or postgraduate schools in Taiwan among 100 top choices.
The company has edged out Taiwan’s top electronics maker, which was the new job seekers’ top choice last year.
Chunghwa Telecom was followed by Uni-President Group (統一集團), Eslite Bookstore (誠品), China Steel Corp (中鋼) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), Cheers reported.
ProMOS sells property
ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), Taiwan’s most unprofitable memory-chip maker, sold a property to Kingston Technology Co for NT$1.17 billion (US$35 million).
ProMOS booked NT$38.8 million in losses from the sale of a building located in Hsinchu, where the company is based, it said in a Taiwan exchange filing yesterday.
China steel posts profit
China Steel Corp (中鋼), Taiwan’s largest steelmaker, booked a profit of NT$506.04 million (US$15 million) from selling 13.5 million of its shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) for NT$695.43 million.
The shares were sold at an average of NT$51.51 each between April 23 and Wednesday, the Kaohsiung-based company said yesterday.
From April 16 to April 20, the company sold 10 million TSMC shares for NT$514.54 million.
Evergreen posts loss
Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), Asia’s biggest container line, swung to a first-quarter loss of NT$2.74 billion (US$83 million), or NT$0.89 per share, from a profit of NT$367 million, or NT$0.12, a year earlier, it said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
The firm benefited from a return to profit at affiliate EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空). The airline, 19 percent owned by Evergreen, posted its first quarterly profit in more than a year on increased flights to China and lower fuel costs.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
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