Shares close lower
Taiwanese shares closed 0.15 percent lower yesterday as investors turned cautious ahead of high-level talks with China next week, dealers said. The weighted index fell 11.51 points to 7,807.62 on turnover of NT$130.87 billion (US$4.05 billion).
Fifty-two stocks surged to their daily 7 percent limit against nine limit-down as fund managers pushed select small caps higher.
“Investors were not certain what may happen when the talks are held next week,” said Vickie Hsieh (謝雯霞) of President Securities (統一證券).
Chunghwa heads for the cloud
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電), Taiwan’s largest phone company, plans to spend more than NT$10 billion over the next three years on cloud computing, the Taipei-based company said in an exchange filing yesterday.
It will begin services in cloud computing, in which information is stored on remote computers and accessed over the Internet, in 2012, the statement said.
Inotera announces share sale
Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), the computer-memory chip venture between Micron Technology Inc of the US and Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), plans to sell 640 million new shares tentatively priced at NT$18 each, the Taoyuan-based company said.
The company plans to use the proceeds from the domestic share sale to buy factory equipment, the statement said. Inotera fell 0.5 percent to close at NT$20.80 on the TAIEX before the announcement.
Separately, Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s third-biggest maker of personal computers, booked a NT$5.5 million loss from the sale of 20 million shares in Eslite Bookstore Corp (誠品), the Taipei-based company said.
UMC buys out UMC Japan
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s second-biggest contract microchip maker by revenue, said yesterday it had completed a buyout of UMC Japan in a bid to boost competitiveness.
UMC now owns 100 percent of the Japanese unit, up from 50.09 percent prior to the buyout, which was carried out by UMC’s fully owned subsidiary, Alpha Wisdom, the company said in a statement.
The move is “beneficial to enhancing the speed of and realizing further efficiency of UMC Group management, maximizing overall corporate value and competitiveness for the UMC Group and its customers,” it said.
Taxes for luxury properties?
Taipei City Government is studying a plan to raise taxes on luxury properties to reflect rising home prices.
“We are studying proposals to change the housing tax rates because the current system doesn’t take into consideration factors such as building costs and the market value of the property,” Hsieh Sung-fang (謝松芳), director of the Taipei Revenue Service, said by telephone yesterday.
The city government has levied a flat rate of 1.2 percent on residential properties for the past 28 years, Hsieh said. The new proposal is likely to be settled on by August, introduced in 2011 and come into effect the following year, he said.
Home prices in Taipei rose 14.4 percent to an all-time high in the first nine months over the same period last year as banks cut mortgage rates to the lowest level since records began, according to Sinyi Realty Co (信義房屋).
Hsieh said the government had not decided on the tax threshold because housing prices vary from location to location.
However, the Chinese-language United Daily News, citing unidentified tax officials, reported yesterday that taxes would apply to properties valued at NT$100 million (US$3 million) and above.
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