REAL ESTATE
Housing slump expected
The transaction volume for residential properties across Taiwan last year was likely to set a 13-year low due to extended weakness in the property market, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) planning and research director Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨) said yesterday. With home sales remaining sluggish after the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections, transactions for the whole year might register less than 320,000 units nationwide, the third-lowest level in decades, Hsu said, adding that 289,000 units changed hands in 1991 and 259,000 in 2001. Both Greater Kaohsiung and Greater Taichung saw home transactions decline by 10.99 percent and 5.66 percent respectively last month from November, while transactions in Taipei, New Taipei City and Greater Taoyuan gained 13.66 percent, 11.18 percent and 4.55 percent respectively, according to H&B tallies.
BANKING
Chang Hwa names president
State-run Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行) on Tuesday said its board had agreed to appoint executive vice president James Shih (施建安) as president, after a local banking conglomerate rejected the Ministry of Finance’s offer to name the candidate. The finance ministry on Dec. 10 named Chang Hwa president Chang Ming-daw (張明道) as chairman after the ministry beat the lender’s major shareholder, Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控), and gained control of the lender’s board.
LIFE INSURANCE
Taiwan Life’s Jou leaves
Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽保險) on Tuesday said its board approved the resignation of acting president David Jou (周國端), which was to take effect today. Jou, who left China’s Taikang Life Insurance Co (泰康人壽) as chief financial officer in October, would remain a board director of Taiwan Life, a company statement said.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Arthritis drug in pipeline
Taiwan Liposome Co (台灣微脂體), a developer of generic drugs used to treat breast and ovarian cancer, on Tuesday said it had filed an investigational new drug application for TLC599 in Taiwan, a treatment it developed to counter arthritis, especially in small joints such as fingers. Taiwan Liposome said in a press release that if the Food and Drug Administration approves its application, the company would proceed with phase one and phase two clinical trials with about 40 subjects.
MANUFACTURING
Hon Hai wins patent suit
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Monday said that it has won a final ruling in a patent suit against Lotes Suzhou Co (得意精密電子蘇州). Hon Hai and its subsidiary, Foxconn (Kunshan) Computer Connector Co (富士康昆山電腦接插件), said Hon Hai received the final ruling from the Higher People’s Court of Jiangsu Province on Dec. 19, which upheld a ruling by the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court that Lotes Suzhou infringed Hon Hai’s USB 3.0 patents.
BANKING
HSBC set to offer in China
HSBC Holdings PLC plans to sell the first asset-backed securities by a foreign bank in China as Beijing accelerates development of the market. The bank is to offer 1.35 billion yuan (US$217.5 million) of the notes on Jan. 15, according to a statement on the Chinabond Web site on Tuesday. Banks issued 267.7 billion yuan of notes backed by loans last year, compared with 15.8 billion yuan in 2013, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS