EQUITIES
No impact from REITs: FSC
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday said that local investors would not be affected by the growing list of UK property funds that has been suspended from trading since the country’s referendum to leave the EU. The commission said these UK-linked real-estate investment trusts (REIT) are not listed in Taiwan and regulatory guidelines prohibit the sale of offshore funds investing in high-risk areas, including real estate, gold and other commodities. While the securitized REITs pose less of a concern to local investors, investment trusts and funds that buy UK properties could be in trouble, as the disposal of real estate requires a lengthy process, the commission said.
INTEREST RATES
Central bank cuts interest
The central bank said it has slashed the interest it pays financial institutions on reserves that originate from passbook and time deposits to reflect market interest rates. The central bank is to pay an interest rate of 0.146 percent on reserves from passbook deposits and 0.82 percent on reserves from time deposits, effective today, it said in a statement. The new rates represent reductions of 0.186 percent and 0.898 percent respectively. Interest is paid to financial institutions’ B accounts, which constitute 55 percent of their reserves, while the central bank does not pay interest on A accounts, which make up the remainder.
AUTOMAKERS
Sanyang eyes 25% share
Automobile and motorcycle manufacturer Sanyang Industry Co (三陽工業), which yesterday launched its new Mio 115 scooter, aims to capture 25 percent of the domestic motorcycle market this year. The company, which sells motorcycles and scooters under the SYM brand, hopes the new NT$55,000 (US$1,702) scooter will boost sales in the second half of this year. The company said it is also targeting a 30 percent share of the local passenger vehicle market. Total sales in the first five months of the year totaled NT$12.89 billion, down by 9.86 percent from the same period a year ago.
CEMENT
TCC annual loss forecast
Taiwan Cement Corp (台灣水泥) yesterday said its Hong Kong-listed subsidiary, TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團), might report an annual loss in the first half because of falling average selling prices of cement, clinker and slag powder in China. Depreciation of the yuan could also cause potential foreign exchange losses in TCC’s US dollar-denominated bank loans, Taiwan Cement said, citing TCC’s profit warning to Hong Kong’s bourse. TCC net profit totaled HK$81.1 million (US$10.45 million at the current exchange rate) in the first six months of last year, with a net loss of HK$249 million for the whole of last year.
ELECTRONICS
Synnex sales rise 14 percent
Synnex Technology International Corp (聯強國際) yesterday said consolidated sales in the second quarter rose 14 percent from a year earlier to NT$83.5 billion, after last month’s sales recorded strong annual growth of 16 percent. Asia’s largest distributor of technology products and electronics components said overall sales in the first half totaled NT$161 billion, up by 12 percent from the same period last year and setting a new record high. The company expects strong sales for the whole of this year, Synnex said.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
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