ECONOMY
Money supply increases
The nation’s money supply increased last month, but the narrow gauge M1B — cash and cash equivalents — slowed to its lowest level in four years at 4.57 percent as people cut cash positions in favor of time deposits and insurance policies, the central bank said yesterday. The bank shrugged off concerns of a downturn in equity investment interest, saying the local bourse has benefited from continued foreign fund inflows. Foreign fund inflows totaled US$9.28 billion last quarter, higher than the US$6.55 billion recorded a year earlier, the bank said. The broad money gauge M2 — which includes foreign currency deposits, time deposits and M1B — advanced at 3.64 percent, slower than M1B, lending support to liquidity mobility, the bank said.
CEMENT MAKERS
Chia Hsin to sell TCCI stake
Chia Hsin Cement Corp (嘉泥) yesterday said its board has approved a plan to sell its stake in TCC International Holdings Ltd (TCCI, 台泥國際集團), a joint venture between the company and Taiwan Cement Corp (台灣水泥), to support TCCI’s privatization. The plan came as Taiwan Cement announced its proposal to privatize TCCI and delist its shares from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Taiwan Cement is the largest stakeholder in TCCI, owning a 63.05 percent stake, while Chia Hsin has a 9.7 percent stake, company data showed. Chia Hsin shareholders are to receive 0.42 Taiwan Cement shares for each TCCI common share, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
E-COMMERCE
Amazon opens Taiwan office
Amazon.com Inc yesterday launched its Taiwan office to help local companies explore opportunities in the global business-to-business market. The office is tasked with connecting Taiwanese businesses to Amazon’s 300 million active customers and 40,000 institutional clients worldwide, Amazon Global Selling Asia head Cindy Tai (戴竫斐) said yesterday. The US giant’s electronic commerce and logistics services are well suited to helping Taiwan’s export-oriented companies tap into the global market without setting up costly distribution deals, Tai said.
CHIPMAKERS
Novatek cuts its dividend
Novatek Microelectronics Corp (聯詠), which supplies chips that control flat-panel displays, yesterday announced a plan to distribute a cash dividend of NT$7 per share, lower than the NT$9 per share the company paid last year. That translates into a dividend yield of 6.31 percent when compared with the stock’s closing price of NT$111 yesterday. Last year, Novatek made NT$5 billion (US$165.2 million) in net profit, or earnings per share of NT$8.22, down from NT$6.4 billion, or earnings per share of NT$10.52, the previous year.
AIRLINES
TransAsia agrees sale
TransAsia Airways Corp (復興航空), which ended operations on Nov. 22 last year because of insurmountable financial woes, has reached an agreement for a buyer to conditionally acquire 11 of its aircraft for US$364 million, the airline said. However, the highest bidder for the 11-plane package consented to TransAsia selling any of the 11 airplanes to the second-highest bidder because the deal could take a long time to complete, the airline said in a statement released on Sunday. Based on that condition, TransAsia has decided to sell four A330s and A321s to the second-highest bidder, with whom it would sign a contract today, the statement said.
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
RSS