Share prices dip
Share prices closed lower yesterday, with the TAIEX falling 88.82 points, or 1.07 percent, to close at 8,249.
The bourse opened higher and surged to the day’s high of 8,395.39 before sliding under high selling pressure.
A total of 5.58 billion shares changed hands on market turnover of NT$157.83 billion (US$4.96 billion).
Foreign institutional investors and China qualified domestic institutional investors were top sellers of NT$3.2 billion in shares.
All eight major stock categories lost ground, with construction shares shedding the most at 1.4 percent.
Losers outnumbered gainers 2,348 to 885, with 190 stocks remaining unchanged.
Regional PC sales to grow
Sales of personal computers in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, should grow 16 percent this year after a strong rebound in the fourth quarter of last year, industry monitor IDC said yesterday in Singapore.
IDC said in a statement that PC sales rose 32 percent in the three months to last month from the same period in 2008, powered by strong demand for portable computers.
For the whole of last year, sales of personal computers in the region climbed 14 percent over the previous year, but still far short of the 22 percent growth achieved in 2007, IDC said.
It said regional PC sales should grow 16 percent this year and expand by 18 percent next year.
The Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) was the top vendor last year, with nearly 20 percent market share, followed by Hewlett-Packard Co with a market share of around 17 percent.
Dell Inc was in third place with an 8.7 percent market share, followed by Acer Inc (宏碁) with 8.5 percent.
Another Baidu executive quits
Baidu Inc (百度), operator of China’s biggest Internet search engine, lost a second executive this month, weakening the company’s ability to take advantage of the possible exit of its biggest rival Google Inc from the market.
The Beijing-based company said on Monday that chief technology officer Li Yinan (李一男) quit for personal reasons, 10 days after announcing the departure of chief operating officer Peng Ye (葉朋).
The resignations may be a setback for Baidu at a time when it faces competition from smaller search engines such as Sohu.com Inc (搜狐) to win business from Google customers in the world’s biggest Internet market.
PRC eyes tighter rules
China may order life insurers to stop selling policies through banks if excessive growth in such sales leads to “inadequate” solvency ratios, which measure their ability to settle claims, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission said.
Insurers should improve their assessment of the profitability of sales made through banks and avoid “price wars,” the commission said on its Web site yesterday.
The regulator may limit or revoke licenses of insurance companies found to have been engaged in price wars to boost policy sales, it said.
NT dollar slides
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.01 to close at NT$31.800.
A total of US$598 million changed hands during the day’s trading.
The local currency opened at NT$31.790 and fluctuated between NT$31.740 and NT$31.800 during the session.
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