CONGLOMERATES
Banks sue Ting Hsin Group
Several banks on Tuesday filed a motion with the Taipei District Court for provisional attachments of assets and lands held by a subsidiary of the scandal-ridden Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團) after it defaulted on a loan. The move came after Ting Lu Development Co (頂率開發), Ting Hsin’s real-estate unit, failed to pay a balance of NT$6.5 billion (US$205 million) owed on a syndicated loan by the Dec. 31 dateline.
FINANCE
Public debt per capita rises
Government debt per person in Taiwan climbed to NT$232,000 (US$7,254) at the end of last month, an increase of NT$3,000 from the end of the previous month, the Ministry of Finance said. Outstanding debt with a maturity of more than one year stood at NT$5.25 trillion as of the end of last month, while outstanding short-term debt (maturing in less than a year) was NT$190 billion, the ministry said.
FINANCE
Forex reserves shrink
Foreign-exchange reserves slid to US$418.98 billion at the end of last month, down US$2.486 billion from a month earlier, as the euro and other major currencies depreciated against the US dollar, the central bank said in a statement on Tuesday. For the full year, foreign-exchange reserves rose US$2.169 billion from the end of 2013, data showed.
FINANCE
T-bill sale falls short
The government failed to achieve its target at a Treasury bill sale for the first time in eight months on signs the central bank would raise interest rates this year. The Ministry of Finance sold NT$28.7 billion of 273-day Treasury bills yesterday, less than its NT$30 billion goal, at a yield of 0.55 percent, the central bank said in a statement. That is the highest yield on sales of similar-
maturity debt since February 2013, while the 2.1 bid-to-cover ratio was the lowest since 2007.
SEMICONDUCTORS
ASE sales beat forecast
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world’s top chip packager, yesterday said revenue edged down 1.5 percent last month to NT$24.87 billion from NT$25.25 billion the previous month. Nonetheless, its revenue still rose 15 percent sequentially to NT$76.65 billion last quarter, from NT$66.63 billion in the previous quarter. The quarterly growth exceeded the company’s forecast of a 12 percent sequential expansion. Last year, ASE’s sales rose 16.71 percent to NT$256.59 billion from NT$219.86 billion.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Macronix sales dip 11.7%
Macronix International Co (旺宏電子), which supplies memory chips to Japanese game console maker Nintendo Co, yesterday said revenue fell 11.7 percent sequentially to NT$1.68 billion last month. Last year, the memory chipmaker accumulated NT$22.41 billion in total revenue, up 1 percent from NT$22.2 billion in 2013.
GARMENTS
Makalot annual sales up
Makalot Industrial Co (聚陽實業), a diversified garment manufacturer for global brands and major clothing retailers, yesterday reported quarterly revenues of NT$4.64 billion (US$145 million) for last quarter, up 8.92 percent from NT$4.26 billion a year earlier. Consolidated sales for October to December fell 22.92 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$6.02 billion. For the full year, consolidated sales totaled NT$20.88 billion, up 16.63 percent from the previous year.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
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