EQUITIES
Fundraising hits new low
Equity fundraising by Taiwanese businesses has hit a new low since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis amid slowing economic growth and rock-bottom interest rates, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday. In the first half, the amount of capital raised through new share issues fell to NT$157.55 billion (US$4.91 billion), a decrease of 41.35 percent from the same period last year. Following consecutive interest rate cuts, companies have begun selecting bank loans to take advantage of low financing costs, the commission said.
SECURITY SERVICES
Secom opens retail outlets
Taiwan Secom Co (中興保全) yesterday said it would continue to diversify beyond its core security services business and maximize synergy between affiliates of its SIGMU Group. The company is aiming to encompass the dining, medical, home, transportation and entertainment needs of consumers. To do so, the company has opened two retail outlets in Taipei to showcase its new offerings, each with a monthly revenue of between NT$300,000 and NT$500,000. In addition, the company said that it would open at least one new store each month, setting a goal to open 200 such stores in the next three years.
RETAIL
Kindom inaugurates mall
Land developer and construction firm Kindom Construction Corp (冠德建設) yesterday inaugurated its Global Mall (環球購物中心), at Taipei’s Nangang Railway Station. The shopping mall targets commuters and travelers at the station, which services Taiwan Railways Administration trains, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (台灣高鐵) and Taipei’s MRT system. The newly built 8,595m2 shopping center will create hundreds of job opportunities and is expected to generate more than NT$700 million in revenue per year, Kindom chairman Timothy Ma (馬玉山) said yesterday.
STOCK MARKETS
TWSE touts governance
The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) on Monday said that after three years of efforts by the exchange to promote corporate governance, the quality of many listed companies’ shareholder meetings has improved significantly. According to a corporate governance blueprint issued by the exchange in 2013, listed companies are required to have their corporate governance practices evaluated by the TWSE and have consequently taken steps to improve their performance in this area. One of the exchange’s corporate governance initiatives was to get listed companies to hold shareholder meetings that give investors a platform to monitor the company’s operations and protect their interests. The campaign has been effective, as the quality of shareholder meetings has improved year after year and made a considerable leap compared with three years ago, seen through many different metrics, the TWSE said. A total of 614 listed companies, or more than 70 percent of those on the main bourse, had shareholders vote on every motion proposed at their shareholder meetings this year, up from 56 percent a year earlier, the TWSE said. About 93 percent of listed companies posted the results of their shareholder meetings on the TWSE’s Market Observation Post System on the same day that shareholder meetings were held, while more than half of all listed companies adopted e-voting to enable shareholders who could not attend the meeting to vote.
EXTRATERRITORIAL REACH: China extended its legal jurisdiction to ban some dual-use goods of Chinese origin from being sold to the US, even by third countries Beijing has set out to extend its domestic laws across international borders with a ban on selling some goods to the US that applies to companies both inside and outside China. The new export control rules are China’s first attempt to replicate the extraterritorial reach of US and European sanctions by covering Chinese products or goods with Chinese parts in them. In an announcement this week, China declared it is banning the sale of dual-use items to the US military and also the export to the US of materials such as gallium and germanium. Companies and people overseas would be subject to
TECH COMPETITION: The US restricted sales of two dozen types of manufacturing equipment and three software tools, and blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities US President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled new restrictions on China’s access to vital components for chips and artificial intelligence (AI), escalating a campaign to contain Beijing’s technological ambitions. The US Department of Commerce slapped additional curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and chipmaking gear, including that produced by US firms at foreign facilities. It also blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities that it accused of acting on Beijing’s behalf, although it did not name them in an initial statement. Full details on the new sanctions and Entity List additions were to be published later yesterday, a US official said. The US “will
TENSE TIMES: Formosa Plastics sees uncertainty surrounding the incoming Trump administration in the US, geopolitical tensions and China’s faltering economy Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), Taiwan’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday posted overall revenue of NT$118.61 billion (US$3.66 billion) for last month, marking a 7.2 percent rise from October, but a 2.5 percent fall from one year earlier. The group has mixed views about its business outlook for the current quarter and beyond, as uncertainty builds over the US power transition and geopolitical tensions. Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠), a vertically integrated supplier of plastic resins and petrochemicals, reported a monthly uptick of 15.3 percent in its revenue to NT$18.15 billion, as Typhoon Kong-rey postponed partial shipments slated for October and last month, it said. The
COLLABORATION: The operations center shows the close partnership between Taiwan and Japan in the field of semiconductors, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo said Tokyo Electron Ltd, Asia’s biggest semiconductor equipment supplier, yesterday launched a NT$2 billion (US$61.5 million) operations center in Tainan as it aims to expand capacity and meet growing demand. Its new Taiwan Operations Center is expected to help customers release their products faster, boost production efficiency and shorten equipment repair time in a cost-effective way, the company said. The center is about a five-minute drive from the factories of its major customers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) advanced 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer fabs. The operations center would have about 1,000 employees when it is fully utilized, the company
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