Far EasTone to sell stake
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), Taiwan’s third-largest telephone operator, expects to complete the sale of a 12 percent stake to China Mobile Ltd (中國移動) after Taiwan and China sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), Far EasTone chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) said in an interview yesterday.
“If the Taiwanese government and China are aggressive, we can probably do it after ECFA; three to five months,” Hsu said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Maybe, hopefully, within six months to a year, at most.”
Hsu on June 16 said he expected the deal to be approved by Chinese and Taiwanese authorities by the end of the year.
ECFA will lift growth: economist
An ECFA will help Taiwan achieve sustained economic growth once it is signed, an economist with the UN said on Thursday.
Nagesh Kumar, chief and top economist of the Macroeconomic Policy and Development Division under the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), said in an interview that China is the fastest-growing economy in the world and that Asia-Pacific countries will benefit as a result.
Earlier on Thursday at its Bangkok headquarters, ESCAP released its “Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2010,” in which it forecast 4.5 percent economic growth for Taiwan.
Flextronics revenue to grow
Flextronics International Ltd expects revenue from its laptop and server division to climb 50 percent to 100 percent this year, Ken Kan, vice president for notebook engineering, said in Taipei yesterday.
The unit, a supplier to Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc, posted NT$150 billion (US$4.726 billion) in revenue last year, Kan said.
The company is trying to secure orders from Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s largest notebook vendor, he said.
Fubon sells debentures
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) said its banking unit sold NT$6 billion of debentures to help meet funding demands.
The bank will pay annual interest of 1.6 percent on the NT$5.5 billion of five-year notes and 1.7 percent on the NT$500 million of seven-year debt, Fubon Financial said in a stock exchange filing yesterday.
DBS profits rise 23 percent
Singaporean lender DBS Group Holdings Ltd (星展集團) said quarterly profit rose 23 percent because of higher stock broking and investment banking income and an improving loan portfolio.
Southeast Asia’s largest bank yesterday reported earnings of S$532 million (US$379 million) for the three months ended March 31, compared with S$433 million a year earlier.
Revenue rose 10 percent, the bank said.
“We’ve taken steps to strengthen our wealth management and small and medium businesses,” DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta said in a statement.
“DBS has had good momentum so far,” Gupta said.
NT dollar plummets
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday had its biggest weekly drop in more than a year as Europe’s sovereign debt crisis prompted investors to shun emerging-market assets and favor US dollars.
The NT dollar fell 1.4 percent this week to NT$31.850 against its US counterpart at the 4pm local closing time, Taipei Forex Inc said.
That was the biggest weekly drop since February last year.
The TAIEX slipped for a ninth day, the longest losing streak since 2005.
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
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
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
RESHAPING COMMERCE: Major industrialized economies accepted 15 percent duties on their products, while charges on items from Mexico, Canada and China are even bigger US President Donald Trump has unveiled a slew of new tariffs that boosted the average US rate on goods from across the world, forging ahead with his turbulent effort to reshape international commerce. The baseline rates for many trading partners remain unchanged at 10 percent from the duties Trump imposed in April, easing the worst fears of investors after the president had previously said they could double. Yet his move to raise tariffs on some Canadian goods to 35 percent threatens to inject fresh tensions into an already strained relationship, while nations such as Switzerland and New Zealand also saw increased
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