Hon Hai plans GDR
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, plans to sell as many as 370 million new shares overseas.
Hon Hai will seek shareholder approval for the issue of global depositary receipts at its annual shareholders’ meeting on April 16, the Taipei-based company said in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday.
The company will raise as much as NT$21.8 billion (US$650 million) from the share sale, based on the stock’s closing price on Wednesday.
Taishin delays share offer
Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控), the nation’s second-worst performing financial stock last year, yesterday postponed a share sale plan after halving the offer.
The company said on Nov. 27 that the board had approved plans to sell 1.4 billion shares in the first quarter to raise funds to boost its capital adequacy ratio.
However, in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, Taishin Financial said it would only offer 700 million new shares at NT$5 each to raise NT$3.5 billion (US$104 million) and would delay the issuance to the second quarter,
Siliconware books losses
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密), the nation’s second-largest chip packaging and testing company, said yesterday it booked a loss of NT$2.6 billion (US$77.5 million) to reflect the decline in value of its investments in ChipMOS Technologies (Bermuda) Ltd (南茂科技) and Phoenix Precision Technology Corp (全懋精密).
Siliconware Precision said in a statement it booked a loss of NT$2.14 billion for its holdings in ChipMOS shares, and a loss of NT$454 million for its Phoenix holdings.
Singapore unveils stimulus
The Singaporean government unveiled a multibillion dollar plan to boost spending and cut taxes in a bid to ease the worst recession in the city-state’s history.
The government will lower corporate taxes, subsidize wages, guarantee bank loans and spend more on infrastructure as part of the S$20.5 billion (US$13.6 billion) stimulus package, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in a televised speech yesterday.
The spending surge will widen this year’s fiscal deficit to a record for Singapore and will be partly paid for by tapping S$4.9 billion in reserves, he said.
Singapore on Wednesday slashed its growth forecast for this year, saying the economy could shrink as much as 5 percent as global demand for the country’s exports collapses.
Nokia’s Q4 profit plummets
Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone maker, yesterday reported a nearly 69 percent drop in its fourth-quarter net profit to 576 million euros (US$749 million) amid falling sales and lower prices for its handsets.
Nokia chief executive officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said the global financial crisis had dampened demand for mobile phones, but insisted the company would continue to invest in future growth, although it needed to cut costs.
“We are taking action to reduce overall costs and to preserve our strong capital structure. This is clearly our top priority in the current economic environment,” Kallasvuo said in a statement.
Kallasvuo said the financial crisis had made the macroeconomic situation worse in recent weeks and the company cut its guidance for this year for global mobile device volumes.
Nokia said it now expects such volumes to decline some 10 percent this year from last year’s level compared with its previous forecast of a 5 percent fall.
NetApp tops employers
NetApp tops the list of the 100 best companies to work for, most of which have open positions and are hiring, Fortune magazine said yesterday.
Coming in second on Fortune’s 12th annual list was Edward Jones, followed by Boston Consulting Group. The list was published online on fortune.com/bestcompanies and contained in an issue set to hit newsstands on Monday.
NetApp, based in Sunnyvale, California, provides storage and data management services to businesses.
It employs 5,000 people and topped the list because of its “employee enthusiasm for the legendary egalitarian culture,” Fortune said.
The popular Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) arbitrage trade might soon see a change in dynamics that could affect the trading of the US listing versus the local one. And for anyone who wants to monetize the elevated premium, Goldman Sachs Group Inc highlights potential trades. A note from the bank’s sales desk published on Friday said that demand for TSMC’s Taipei-traded stock could rise as Taiwan’s regulator is considering an amendment to local exchange-traded funds’ (ETFs) ownership. The changes, which could come in the first half of this year, could push up the current 30 percent single-stock weight limit
EARLY TALKS: Measures under consideration include convincing allies to match US curbs, further restricting exports of AI chips or GPUs, and blocking Chinese investments US President Donald Trump’s administration is sketching out tougher versions of US semiconductor curbs and pressuring key allies to escalate their restrictions on China’s chip industry, an early indication the new US president plans to expand efforts that began under former US president Joe Biden to limit Beijing’s technological prowess. Trump officials recently met with their Japanese and Dutch counterparts about restricting Tokyo Electron Ltd and ASML Holding NV engineers from maintaining semiconductor gear in China, people familiar with the matter said. The aim, which was also a priority for Biden, is to see key allies match China curbs the US
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
‘SACRED MOUNTAIN’: The chipmaker can form joint ventures abroad, except in China, but like other firms, it needs government approval for large investments Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) needs government permission for any overseas joint ventures (JVs), but there are no restrictions on making the most advanced chips overseas other than for China, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. US media have said that TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp, has been in talks for a stake in Intel Corp. Neither company has confirmed the talks, but US President Donald Trump has accused Taiwan of taking away the US’ semiconductor business and said he wants the industry back
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