Yuan deposits edge higher
Yuan deposits at Taiwanese banks totaled 293.026 billion yuan (US$47.64 billion) at the end of last month, up 0.1 percent from the 292.738 billion yuan at the end of June, the central bank said yesterday.
Last month’s level of yuan deposits included 240.988 billion yuan in savings accounts at 67 domestic banking units and 52.038 billion yuan in savings accounts at 58 offshore banking units, according to data provided by the central bank.
Medigen shares continue fall
Medigen Biotechnology Corp (基亞) shares extended their losses yesterday, falling by the maximum daily limit of 7 percent for the 15th consecutive trading session, despite the company strongly denying on Thursday news reports that the development of its new liver cancer drug is just a scam.
Medigen shares closed at NT$150 yesterday on the GRETAI Securities Market. Medigen’s market capitalization has been cut by NT$40 billion as its share price has fallen 66 percent over the past 19 trading sessions.
E Ink back in the black
E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技), the world’s largest e-paper display maker, swung into a quarterly profit of NT$85 million (US$2.83 million) last quarter, thanks to an improvement in gross margin, which rose to 15.7 percent from minus-1.6 percent in the first quarter.
The company reported a net loss of NT$965 million in the first quarter.
In the first six months, E Ink’s cumulative losses shrank 41.4 percent to NT$879 million from NT$1.5 billion the previous year.
Acer eyeing Mexican market
Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s No. 4 PC brand, plans to sell its new smartphones and wearable devices in Mexico next quarter through retailer Office Depot.
Acer ranked the No. 2 PC brand in Mexico last quarter. The country will be the 31st in which Acer sells its smartphones this year.
The company said earlier it plans to sell its smartphones in 25 overseas markets this year.
CTBC defends former chairman
CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) on Thursday said its former vice chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒) and some of its employees did not make a profit from investments related to an illegal purchase of a 9.9 percent stake in state-run Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) a decade ago, after the Taiwan Supreme Court sent a High Court ruling back to the trial court.
The case is known locally as the Red Fire Case after the name of an offshore company used to conduct the transactions in 2004.
Koo Jr and several company executives were accused by prosecutors of buying the Mega Financial stake without the approval of the company’s board.
The high court last year sentenced Koo to nine years and eight months in prison for violating the Securities Exchange Act (證券交易法) and the Banking Act (銀行法).
CAL to add Christchurch flights
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, said on Thursday that it plans to offer flights to Christchurch, New Zealand, between Dec. 1 and Feb. 28 next year to meet higher travel demand at that time.
The route, which will transit through Sydney, will operate every Monday, Thursday and Saturday during the period, bringing the airline’s total number of flights to New Zealand to 11 a week.
CAL also has 14 flights to Australia a week, plus another eight flights to Auckland via Sydney or Brisbane.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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