■SHIPPING
China opens ports to Taiwan
China approved five additional ports for direct shipping with Taiwan, bringing the total to 68, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing China’s transportation ministry. The addition of ports Tongling, Shidao, Laizhou, Taizhou Damaiyu and Ningbo-Zhoushan were announced yesterday at a meeting on cross-strait direct shipping in the southern city of Xiamen, Xinhua said. China agreed to waive business taxes and corporate income taxes for Taiwanese shippers on profit earned in China from direct shipping, Xinhua said. The exemption is effective from Dec. 15 of last year, it said.
■STOCKS
China’s IPO backlog mounts
China, whose stock market is the world’s third-best performer this year, has 300 to 400 companies waiting to hold initial public offerings, Citic Securities Co (中信證券) chairman Wang Dongming (王東明) said. That backlog will take two years to clear, Wang, who heads China’s biggest brokerage by market value, said yesterday at a forum in Shanghai. China hasn’t had an IPO since September. The nation’s securities regulator plans to set up a new system for pricing initial public offerings and may “soon” end a moratorium on IPOs, China Securities Regulatory Commission Vice Chairman Fan Fuchun (范富春) said on March 6. Listings were halted “because the market needed a rest,” Fan said. “The decision on who to list, how to price the listing should be given to the investment bank, company and investors,” Wang said.
■STOCKS
Shanghai, Taipei in talks
The Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Taiwan Stock Exchange are in “detailed discussions” on cooperation, Shanghai bourse executive vice president James Liu (劉嘯東) said on Friday at a forum in the Chinese city. Implementation of the initiatives under discussion will depend on government approval, Liu said, without giving details. Taipei will host a conference on exchange-traded funds next week, Taiwan Stock Exchange Chairman Schive Chi (薛琦) said at the forum.
■REAL ESTATE
Report predicts HK rebound
Hong Kong home prices may rebound to levels seen in early September, before the global financial system imploded, according to a report yesterday by Centaline Property Agency Ltd (中原地產). “With sales transactions stabilizing at a normal level and investors preferring to buy fixed assets, we may see home prices back to those levels by year-end,” Wong Leung-sing (黃良昇), an associate director at Centaline, said in a phone interview. Four of the biggest mass housing estates Centaline tracks have already risen past prices posted in early September, the agency said.
■FINANCE
ADB criticizes Philippines
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said yesterday the Philippines has failed to follow a commitment to reduce the number of state-run corporations that have been bleeding government coffers dry. It said Manila sought ADB technical assistance in 2006 to improve the efficiency of government-owned or government-controlled corporations that perform socially oriented services such as maintaining food supply stability or provide basic services in areas including transport, housing and utilities. State enterprises have been “problematic” with “weak institutional and regulatory frameworks” and “most” have been bleeding red ink, the Manila-based ADB said.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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