BANKING
OBU assets listed
The 62 offshore banking units (OBUs) of banks operating in Taiwan posted total assets of US$181.924 billion last month, down US$5.083 billion, or 2.7 percent, from the previous month, the central bank said in a statement yesterday. The OBUs of 37 Taiwanese banks held US$157.204 billion in assets, while US$24.72 billion in assets were held by the OBUs of 25 foreign banks, the central bank said, without elaborating on the decline in total assets. The OBUs’ lending made up about 44.9 percent of their total assets, with interbank lending and deposits accounting for 18.7 percent. Securities investments accounted for an additional 16.2 percent, the central bank said.
ELECTRONICS
Winbond reports earnings
Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子) yesterday reported earnings per share of NT$0.9 for the whole of last year, compared with NT$0.83 the previous year. Net income rose 7 percent year-on-year to NT$3.29 billion (US$97.92 million) last year, with consolidated revenue increasing 1 percent to NT$38.35 billion — its highest in five years — and gross margin moving up 3 pecentage points to 31 percent, the company said in a statement. Specialty DRAM chips are Winbond’s biggest revenue source, providing more than 50 percent of its overall revenue last year.
WEDDING SERVICES
Clevo acquires Da Lue stake
PC maker Clevo Co (藍天) yesterday said it had acquired a 5 percent stake in Da Lue International Holding Co Ltd (大略), a Cayman Islands-registered wedding services provider, with a view to developing wedding-related business in China. Clevo, which operates Buynow (百腦匯) computer and electronics chain stores in China, said it is upbeat over Da Lue’s business prospects in China this year, after the wedding services provider reported earnings per share of NT$5.2 last year, an annual increase of 171 percent from 2014.
LIGHTING
Global reports record sales
Global Lighting Technologies Inc (茂林光電), a light guide plate maker, yesterday reported record-high sales results for last year and said it expects sales to grow this year on growing orders and capacity expansion. The Cayman Islands-registered company said earnings per share were NT$6.5 last year, with revenue of NT$7.06 billion and gross margin of 24 percent. The company said its new plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) is expected to start operations in the second quarter of this year. Analysts expect the company’s revenue to grow by between 10 and 20 percent to NT$8 billion this year, due to rising demand for large-sized TVs and Apple Inc computers.
FOOD
Wei Chuan to sell stakes
Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品) yesterday said its board agreed to sell its 34 percent stakes in two subsidiaries that distribute coffee products made by Japan’s UCC Ueshima Coffee Co Ltd. The stakes are to be sold back to the Japanese company’s Singapore-based subsidiary, UCC Asia Pacific PTE Ltd, Wei Chuan said in a statement. The announcement came after UCC products were included in a boycott of products associated with scandal-ridden Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) last year. Wei Chuan, a subsidiary of Ting Hsin, said that it is to focus on its core food business and did not specify prices involved in the deal.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
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