■SHIPPING
Eergreen staying in south
Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), Asia’s largest container shipper, last night denied a report that it would not renew a lease for a dock at Kaohsiung Port. The Chinese-language Commercial Times said yesterday that Evergreen was planning to follow Danish shipper AP Moeller-Maersk A/S, which earlier this month decided to stop leasing a dock in Kaohsiung a year earlier than scheduled. The report also said Evergreen might halt operations in Kaohsiung and instead launch services at a container wharf at Taipei Port, which is partly invested by the container shipping firm.
■STOCK EXCHANGES
Taiwan to host global meet
Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TWSE, 台灣證交所) has won the right to host the 52nd World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) Annual Conference in 2012 to promote cooperation among regulated exchanges worldwide, a TWSE executive said on Friday. To boost its international profile, TWSE will invite leaders from 103 stock, futures and options exchanges around the world with connections to the WFE to attend the meeting, the executive said.
■CURRENCY
Japan to limit margin trade
Japan’s Financial Services Agency said it planned to limit foreign exchange margin trades to 25 times the amount of cash used for transactions by 2011. An initial limit of 50-to-1 will be set as early as next year and lowered to 25 the next year, the agency said on its Web site on Friday.
■HONG KONG
Economy to recover: official
Hong Kong Financial Secretary John Tsang (曾俊華) said in an e-mailed statement yesterday that the territory’s economy could recover this year, reversing a forecast of a 6.5 percent contraction. Hong Kong announced US$2.2 billion in tax cuts, fee waivers and spending to shield the public from a recession.
■TRADE
Guangdong trade plunges
Guangdong Province, a manufacturing hub heavily dependent on exports, reported an 18.1 percent year-on-year drop in foreign trade last month, China’s Xinhua News Agency said, citing the provincial statistics bureau. However, the total of US$47.14 billion represented a 5.2 percent rise from March, indicating signs of a recovery, Xinhua said. The province attracted US$1.64 billion in foreign direct investment, up 7.2 percent from a year earlier, it said.
■TELECOMS
Judge rules against Qwest
A federal judge has approved a class-action settlement of Qwest shareholders’ claims against former executives of the telecommunications company. An order signed on Wednesday approves a US$45 million settlement of claims against former Qwest Communications International Inc CEO Joe Nacchio and former chief financial officer Robert Woodruff. The order makes effective an earlier US$400 million settlement with Qwest.
■NETWORKING
Cisco warns on earnings
US computer networking gear maker Cisco Systems Inc said on Friday that earnings per share in the current quarter would be US$0.02 to US$0.03 lower owing to a tax-related charge. Cisco said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit changes the company’s tax treatment of certain stock option expenses before 2005. In the filing, Cisco said it would record a charge of US$130 million in the quarter.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$10.26 billion to finance the construction of its second fab in Kumamoto, Japan, and a second fab in Arizona, using advanced process technologies. The Department of Investment Review approved TSMC’s investment applications on the basis that Taiwan remains a major technology and manufacturing hub for the chipmaker, which makes its most advanced chips at home, the company operates its research-and-development center here and the majority of its capacity remains in Taiwan. The latest capital injections — US$5.26 billion for its Japanese venture Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing
Packed into a small room, a drone, bipedal robot, supermarket checkout and other devices showcase a vision of China’s software future — one where an operating system developed by national champion Huawei (華為) has replaced Windows and Android. The collection is at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center in the southern city of Shenzhen, a local government-owned entity that encourages authorities, companies and hardware makers to develop software using OpenHarmony (鴻蒙), an open-source version of the operating system Huawei launched five years ago after US sanctions cut off support for Google’s Android. While Huawei’s recent strong-selling smartphone launches have been closely watched for
The waves of the Aegean Sea lap gently at the tables and chairs of two beach restaurants on Greece’s Halkidiki peninsula. It is an idyllic scene, but one that is totally illegal. Like many others in Greece, the two establishments on Pefkochori Beach do not have a license to set up shop so close to the water. After a wave of protests last summer by locals about bars and restaurants illegally covering beaches with sunbeds and tables, the Greek state is taking action. It is cracking down on rogue tourist practices with surveillance drones, satellite imagery and a special app
AI BOOM: With many stocks trading at historically high levels, the TAIEX is expected to drop about 600 points in the third quarter as investors seek to pocket their profits Taiwan’s main board could experience a technical pullback after the TAIEX soared more than 28 percent in the first half of this year following a strong showing by artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks, analysts said on Saturday, predicting that the index would make a comeback in the fourth quarter. On Friday, the last trading session of this month, the TAIEX rose 126.27 points, or 0.55 percent, to 23,032.25, pushing up the main board by 5,101.44 points, or 28.4 percent, in the first six months of the year. Of the major indices in the world, the TAIEX only trailed the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index