Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TWSE, 台灣證交所) chairman Schive Chi (薛琦) said yesterday that almost 94 percent of Taiwan’s listed companies issued stock dividends last year, with an average yield rate of 2.6 percent, the highest among Asia’s stock markets.
Schive said the percentage of companies issuing stock dividends in Taiwan last year was much higher than the Shanghai stock market at 50 percent, or the South Korean exchange at 25 percent.
“Taiwan’s listed companies are good at making money,” Schive said at a seminar in Taipei.
Frequent investment briefings held by the local stock exchange for global investors, as well as the domestic economic recovery and improvements in capital market structure, have been successful in attracting foreign funds, he said.
The inflow of foreign capital reached a record high of US$158.92 billion in the second quarter of this year, compared with the previous peak of US$153.57 billion seen in the first quarter of 2008 before the global economic slump that began later that year, Schive said.
The foreign fund inflow in the quarter was 28.5 percent higher than the low of US$123.7 billion recorded in the first quarter of last year, he said.
Among the foreign investment, technology stocks accounted for 53.6 percent, he noted.
As of the end of July, there were 743 companies listed on the TWSE, 346 of which, or 47 percent, were high-tech companies.
The market value of high-tech stocks represented about 54 percent of the overall market, while the turnover of those stocks accounted for about 67 percent of the total market turnover, he said.
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