■COFFEE SHOPS
85˚C plans share sale
85˚C Bakery Cafe (美食達人), which aims to expand its network in Taiwan to 180 stores this year, plans to sell shares for the first time as early as this year on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily reported yesterday, citing company spokeswoman Cathy Chung (鐘靜如). Yuanta Securities Co (元大證券) is the underwriter for the sale, the report said.
■TOURISM
Chinese spent big: report
More than 600,000 Chinese tourists visited Taiwan last year, state-run media reported yesterday, amid warming relations between the two sides. The 606,100 visitors each spent nearly US$1,800 during their stay, tourism officials were quoted by the China Daily newspaper as saying. “Years of isolation between the two sides have made Taiwan an attractive place for mainland tourists,” said Zheng Lijuan, deputy general manager of a unit of travel group CITS International (中國國際旅行社).
■TELECOMS
China Mobile denies buyout
China Mobile Ltd (中國移動), the world’s biggest phone company by market value, denied a report that it was in talks to buy Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊). Tencent, operator of China’s biggest online chat software, is the country’s largest Internet company by market value. “We have no plans to buy Tencent,” Rainie Lei (雷雨), a spokeswoman at China Mobile, said by telephone yesterday. China’s DoNews.com reported on Friday that China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou (王建宙) visited Tencent’s headquarters in Shenzhen to discuss a possible takeover, citing people it didn’t identify.
■AUTOMAKERS
Hyundai puts out plant fire
Hyundai Motor Co has extinguished a blaze that broke out at a plant in Ulsan yesterday, South Korea’s largest automaker said. The fire occurred at about 11:25am, Hyundai said in an e-mail. Police are investigating the cause of the blaze, the automaker said. The fire damaged a cooling tower at the plant, which makes Hyundai’s sport-utility vehicles Santa Fe and Tucson, Yonhap News reported. The incident won’t affect production, the company said. No one was injured in the fire, Hyundai said. The plant is about 400km south of Seoul.
■ECONOMY
Indonesia beats forecasts
Indonesia’s budget deficit totaled 87.2 trillion rupiah (US$9.3 billion), or 1.6 percent of GDP, last year, less than a forecast 129.8 trillion rupiah, the Finance Ministry said on its Web site on Friday. Revenues and grants totaled 866.8 trillion rupiah, or 0.5 percent below the estimate, while spending amounted to 954 trillion rupiah, or 4.7 percent less than targeted, it said. Indonesia’s economy probably grew 4.3 percent to 4.4 percent last year, while inflation last year was “about 3 percent,” the statement said.
■INSURANCE
Allianz predicts recovery
Germany’s insurance giant Allianz foresees a massive recovery for the country’s economy this year, with growth exceeding official forecasts and unemployment rising only marginally, a report said on Friday. The daily Bild quoted the group’s chief economist Michael Heise as saying growth would reach 2.8 percent, comfortably above the German central bank’s prediction of 1.6 percent and the strongest since 2006. He said the good performance would be spurred by a boom in exports, stable domestic consumption, government recovery programs and recent tax cuts.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
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