TAIEX
Foreigner stock buys surge
Foreign investors last week bought a net NT$7.73 billion (US$265.23 million) of local shares after buying a net NT$2.18 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had sold NT$773.03 billion of local shares since the beginning of the year, the exchange said. The top three shares bought by foreign investors last week were Innolux Corp (群創光電), Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) and AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), while the top three shares sold by foreign investors were Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) and China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控), it said. As of Friday, the market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$20.56 trillion, or 40.73 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
BIOMEDICAL
Local drug gets foreign deal
PharmaEssentia Corp’s (藥華醫藥) board of directors on Sunday gave approval to a non-binding term sheet to authorize a foreign company to market PharmaEssentia’s blood cancer drug Ropeg in the Latin American market. PharmaEssentia would disclose the name of the firm and the income generated from the deal when a formal agreement is signed, it said in a regulatory filing. The number of people with the rare type of blood cancer, polycythemia vera, is estimated to be more than 100,000 in Latin America, but as the area has a comparatively low insurance coverage rate, the companies plan to target specific groups initially. PharmaEssentia has obtained marketing approval for Ropeg in Taiwan, South Korea, the EU and the US. It holds an upbeat outlook for the second quarter given robust sales of Ropeg in the US.
ENERGY
Taipei signs Somaliland deal
Taiwan and Somaliland signed an agreement on energy and mineral resources cooperation last week that Taiwan’s office in Somaliland said provides a legal foundation for joint resource exploration, drilling activities and other initiatives. A task force is to facilitate information sharing, exploration and drilling, training and capacity building, Taiwan’s representative office in Hargeisa said on social media. CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) in December last year signed a farm-out agreement with UK-based Genel Energy PLC to acquire 49 percent of the rights to explore hydrocarbon resources in the SL10B/13 mining area, and the deal was later approved by the Somaliland government. Taiwan Representative to Somaliland Allen Lou (羅震華) said the first exploration well is to be drilled next year.
CRYPTOCURRENCY
XREX enters European market
XREX Inc (鏈科), a Taipei provider of blockchain cross-border payment solutions, obtained approval from Lithuania’s regulator to provide cryptocurrency services in the country, enabling it to set foot in the European market. The company said it would mainly target firms based in Lithuania, and aims to serve as a bridge to link firms in advanced economies and those in emerging markets. As a registered cryptoasset service provider in Lithuania, XREX would be able to help customers exchange cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, provide a virtual wallet service and act as an online payment guarantor similar to BitCheck, it said. Established in 2018, the company has received regulatory approvals from Estonia, Canada and the US over the past few months, while it is applying to enter the Singaporean market, it said.
Taiwan’s technology protection rules prohibits Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) from producing 2-nanometer chips abroad, so the company must keep its most cutting-edge technology at home, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks in response to concerns that TSMC might be forced to produce advanced 2-nanometer chips at its fabs in Arizona ahead of schedule after former US president Donald Trump was re-elected as the next US president on Tuesday. “Since Taiwan has related regulations to protect its own technologies, TSMC cannot produce 2-nanometer chips overseas currently,” Kuo said at a meeting of the legislature’s
GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES? The economics ministry said that political factors should not affect supply chains linking global satellite firms and Taiwanese manufacturers Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing out of Taiwan, leading to some relocating portions of their supply chain, according to sources employed by and close to the equipment makers and corporate documents. A source at a company that is one of the numerous subcontractors that provide components for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet products said that SpaceX asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan because of geopolitical risks, pushing at least one to move production to Vietnam. A second source who collaborates with Taiwanese satellite component makers in the nation said that suppliers were directly
Top Taiwanese officials yesterday moved to ease concern about the potential fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, making a case that the technology restrictions promised by the former US president against China would outweigh the risks to the island. The prospect of Trump’s victory in this week’s election is a worry for Taipei given the Republican nominee in the past cast doubt over the US commitment to defend it from Beijing. But other policies championed by Trump toward China hold some appeal for Taiwan. National Development Council Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) described the proposed technology curbs as potentially having
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list