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.
MINIMAL EXPECTATIONS: Analysts think that the two sides are likely to aim for ‘status quo’-level agreements, maintaining civility, without major trade breakthroughs US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) were set to meet yesterday to try to set up potential agreements on artificial intelligence (AI), tariffs and critical minerals for a summit in Washington this week between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The meetings at JPMorgan Chase & Co’s headquarters in Manhattan, which included US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, were due to start at about 10:30am on Sunday morning and were expected to run all day. Key topics would be the status of a US-China trade truce that is set to expire
APPEAL: Any agreement to produce advanced memory such as HBM or DRAM could run into opposition from Seoul as those technologies are sensitive, sources said South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc is in talks with Intel Corp about a deal that would see it manufacture memory chips on US soil for the first time, three people familiar with the discussions said. Under one potential scenario, SK Hynix would lease part of Intel’s long-planned chipmaking facility in Ohio, they said. Under another scenario, it could form a venture with Intel and major cloud firms that are keen to lock in memory supplies, two of the people said. A deal would relieve pressure on Intel, which has been struggling, and mark a big win for US President Donald
MORE DATA CENTERS: Microsoft’s Taiwan-area general manager said the corporation is looking to add two more data centers in northern Taiwan over the next few years Microsoft Corp plans to double its data centers in Taiwan from two facilities to four, Microsoft Taiwan general manager Sean Pien (卞志祥) said yesterday. “Over the past two to three years, we have consistently seen demand outstrip supply, and we expect that situation to continue over the next two to three years,” Pien said on the sidelines of a news conference in Taipei. The data center sites would mainly be in northern Taiwan to meet customer demand and reduce the risk of operational disruptions caused by a single event, he said, without saying their exact locations. Microsoft enabled the first phase of
Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei and Salesforce Inc CEO Marc Benioff said companies have just begun taking advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and need more help to gain the greatest benefits for their businesses. The power of AI is barely diffused through the economy, with only 5 to 10 percent of the value of the technology being used, Amodei said on Tuesday during an appearance with Benioff at Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Implementation of AI at large businesses — like the kind Salesforce mostly serves — remains far away from the futuristic vision professed by executives such as