TAIEX drops 0.8 percent
The TAIEX closed down 0.8 percent yesterday, with heavy selling pressure on construction shares due to the government’s possible loan tightening moves.
The weighted index closed 70.61 points lower to 8,713.79 on turnover of NT$98.529 billion (US$3.35 billion).
Construction stocks posted the heaviest losses of the day, ending down 2.8 percent, after the central bank reportedly will decide to tighten loans for construction companies at a meeting later this month.
The continued fall was partially due to the government’s recent move to levy a luxury tax targeting speculative property investors, dealers said.
TSE head to woo Japanese
Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TSE, 台灣證交所) chairman Schive Chi (薛琦) will encourage more Japanese companies to list on the bourse when he visits Japan later this month, the exchange said yesterday.
Schive will inform Japanese company executives of the benefits of listing in Taiwan and the new developments in the local capital market, the exchange said.
Last month, memory chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc listed Taiwan depositary receipts (TDRs) on the stock exchange, becoming the first Japanese company to do so.
Debt burden increases
Every Taiwanese now carries NT$211,000 of national debt, according to Ministry of Finance statistics released yesterday.
The figure is derived by dividing the national debt by the population. The country has a total debt of NT$4,648.5 billion in long-term bonds of one year or more, plus NT$240 billion in short-term debt, while the current population stands at 23 million.
This was the fourth time the ministry has released national debt data based on a national debt clock that was mounted at its headquarters in December.
The central government debt increased by NT$70 billion from early last month, when the ministry last published the debt amount. On average, each Taiwanese’s debt burden has gone up by NT$3,000 since last month.
Kenda Rubber inks agreement
Kenda Rubber Industrial Co (建大輪胎) and Changhua County Government signed an agreement to develop a NT$10 billion science park that may create 1,500 jobs, the tire maker said in a statement to the stock exchange yesterday.
Kenda plans to build a new plant in the park, it said.
CDIB plans to buy into Eversol
China Development Industrial Bank’s (CDIB, 中華開發工銀) board approved a plan to buy up to 15 million common shares in Eversol Corp for no more than NT$495 million, Taipei-based parent China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控) said in a statement to the the stock exchange yesterday.
TSMC details purchases
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, bought NT$2.43 billion of gear and facilities from four vendors, the company said in a statement to the stock exchange yesterday.
The chipmaker bought NT$599 million of equipment from Applied Materials South East Asia Pacific Ltd, NT$630 million from Lam Research International Sarl, NT$530 million of gear from ASM American Inc and NT$666 million of facilities and engineering equipment from Ebara Corp, it said.
NT rises 0.1 percent
The New Taiwan dollar strengthened 0.1 percent to close at NT$29.426 versus the greenback, according to Taipei Forex Inc.
Turnover totaled US$763 million yesterday.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
RSS