Shares close 2.86% lower
Taiwanese shares closed 2.86 percent lower yesterday on fresh concerns about the global economy and Wall Street’s overnight fall, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 129.68 points to 4,405.86 on turnover of NT$51.18 billion (US$1.55 billion).
Losers outnumbered gainers 1,403 to 164, while 166 stocks were unchanged.
A total of 71 shares fell by their daily 7 percent limit, against 10 that were limit-up.
“Mr Terry Gou’s [郭台銘] recent forecast about the bleak outlook of the technology industry worried investors,” said Young Wang of Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting (元大投顧).
Gou, head of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s leading contract manufacturer of electronics by revenue, warned on Friday that the slump in the global technology industry could be more severe than previously thought.
Big caps led the broader-range decline, which fell below the 20-day moving average. But as the turnover shrank, the market is not likely to test the previous low of 3,955, Wang said.
Samsung loses court case
A Chinese court has ordered South Korean electronics giant Samsung to pay compensation to a local cellphone manufacturer for alleged patent infringement, state media reported yesterday.
The Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Zhejiang Province ordered Samsung to pay local firm Holley Communications (華立通信) 50 million yuan (US$7.3 million) in damages, Xinhua news agency said.
Samsung was also told to stop selling products incorporating a technology developed by Holley for handsets, it said.
Holley Communications hoped other companies would pay royalties for patent rights, company president Ge Chen (葛成) said in a statement on its Web site when the firm filed the lawsuit against Samsung in April last year.
Sinopac plans to cut costs
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (建華金控), the nation’s eighth-largest financial services provider, has hammered out a plan to cut costs by NT$1.3 billion by the end of next year, the Chinese-language Commercial Times said yesterday.
The company will immediately freeze its efforts to recruit new blood, while continuing with a plan to slash 5 percent of its 7,000-member workforce by the end of the year, the newspaper reported.
The performance-based termination of employment is likely to save up to NT$500 million in salary expenditures, the report said.
The company will also implement cost-cutting measures such as reducing office rentals and transportation subsidies for employees, the report said.
The company’s year-end party and two-month-salary bonuses to employees will not be affected, Sinopac chairman Ho Show-chuan (何壽川) was quoted as saying.
China may cut lending rate
China’s central bank may cut the main lending rate by 75 basis points by the end of the first quarter of next year and another 54 basis points later in the year, RBC Capital Markets said.
RBC said in a note to clients that it expected the lending rate to be at 3.96 percent by the end of next year.
NT dollar loses ground
The NT dollar dropped for a third day against its US counterpart yesterday, after its biggest decline in seven years on Monday.
The NT dollar fell 0.5 percent to NT$33.085 as of the 4pm close, Taipei Forex Inc said.
The local currency touched NT$33.155, the lowest level in the past week. It weakened 1.2 percent on Monday, the steepest drop since May 28, 2001.
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