Shares close lower
Taiwanese shares fell 0.83 percent yesterday on profit-taking after a Wall Street decline, dealers said.
The TAIEX index dropped 59 points to 7,083.63 on turnover of NT$161.7 billion (US$4.92 billion).
Losers outnumbered gainers 1,368 to 1,011, while 169 shares remained unchanged.
The market opened high but selling pressure from profit-taking soon emerged, pulling the market into negative territory for most of the trading session.
“Wall Street’s overnight fall added pressure to the Taiwan stock market after it hit a one-year high yesterday [Tuesday],” said Michael Yeh (葉泰宏) of Taiwan Life Asset Management Co (台壽保投信).
But Yeh did not expect much downside risk over the short term, given the generally positive results released by the major tech firms during their investor conferences.
Cardif links with Hua Nan bank
Cardif Assurance Vie’s Taiwan branch (法國巴黎人壽) yesterday formed a partnership with Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行), a subsidiary of Hua Nan Financial Holdings Co (華南金控), to jointly expand bancassurance business.
Hua Nan will begin sales of Cardif’s mortgage life insurance products and investment-linked policies in the second half of this year while exploring closer cooperation in product marketing and developing insurance expertise to boost earnings, the company said.
“After witnessing Hua Nan’s potential in insurance businesses, we hope the partnership will create room for closer cooperation between both parties while striking a win-win situation for both of our clients,” the life insurer’s general manager, Ben Ng (黃旗興), said in the statement.
Cardif Assurance has formed sales partnerships with more than 30 banks in Taiwan, it added.
LNG purchases fall
Taiwan, North Asia’s third-biggest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), reduced its purchases of the fuel for a seventh month as electricity demand dropped.
Taiwan bought 1.62 million kiloliters, or 736,400 tonnes, last month, about 8 percent less than a year earlier, data from the Bureau of Energy showed yesterday. It paid US$336.5 million, or US$457 a tonne, for the fuel. LNG imports rose, compared with purchases of 1.58 million kiloliters in May.
Biotechnology receives funds
The National Development Fund (國發基金) has allotted NT$24 billion (US$732 million), including NT$6 billion for next year, to invest in the biotechnology industry in the coming years, executive secretary Hsiao Kuo-hui (蕭國輝) said on Tuesday after a Cabinet meeting.
In addition to the budget, the Cabinet expects to attract non-government investment worth up to NT$36 billion, Hsiao said.
The meeting also drafted regulations for government investment in biotechnology, such as allowing no more than NT$3 billion to be invested in a single corporation and forbidding investment in more than three venture capital firms under a single business group.
NT dollar retreats from high
The New Taiwan dollar retreated from its strongest level in almost four weeks on speculation that the central bank intervened to help combat a 10-month slide in exports.
The NT dollar dropped 0.4 percent to NT$32.87 versus the greenback at the 4pm close, according to Taipei Forex Inc. It touched NT$32.68 earlier in the day, the highest level since July 2.
“The central bank has been buying and intervening to keep it stable,” said Leong Wai Ho (梁偉豪), a Singapore-based economist at Barclays Capital. “The central bank will probably wait for more signs that domestic demand is picking up before it allows the Taiwan dollar to reflect fundamentals.”
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary