■INVESTMENT
Chinatrust to raise NT$44bn
Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控), Taiwan’s fourth-largest listed financial services company, plans to raise NT$44.35 billion (US$1.3 billion) in a private placement of shares. The company plans to sell 2.5 billion shares at NT$17.74 each, it said in an exchange filing on Friday. Chinatrust Financial will use the funds “to strengthen capital and financial structure, inject working capital for long-term operation and business expansion,” the company said in the filing. Chinatrust Financial and Primus Financial Holdings Ltd have placed the highest bids for Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽), the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources. Chinatrust Financial has offered to pay US$2.1 billion for Nan Shan, American International Group Inc’s Taiwan unit, while Primus has placed a US$2 billion bid, the paper said.
■AUTOMAKERS
China sales expected to soar
China’s vehicle sales may rise 28 percent this year, according to the nation’s top planning agency, likely enough for the country to surpass the US as the world’s largest auto market. Full-year sales may reach as high as 12 million vehicles, Chen Bin (陳斌), chief director of the industry coordination department at the National Development and Reform Commission, said yesterday at a conference in Tianjin. US sales will likely be around 10.5 million, according to both General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co. China has boosted auto sales this year through tax cuts and subsidies as a part of a wider 4 trillion yuan (US$586 billion) stimulus that has shielded the country from the worst of the global recession.
■BEVERAGES
Coca-Cola grows in Vietnam
The Coca-Cola Company said it would double its investment in Vietnam to US$400 million. The firm said it would invest, in conjunction with its local bottler, an additional US$200 million in the country over the next three years. Since returning to Vietnam in 1994, Coca-Cola has already invested US$200 million and has three bottling plants: in the north, central and southern parts of the country, the company said in a statement on Friday. “Vietnam is a very important growth market to The Coca-Cola Company,” the firm’s chairman and chief executive officer Muhtar Kent said in the statement.
■AUTOMAKERS
Suzuki eyes new India plant
Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp plans to build a new plant in India in 2011 in a bid to meet growing demand for cars in the country, a newspaper reported yesterday. The manufacturer of small cars and motorcycles plans to invest about ¥30 billion (US$323 million) in construction of a plant with annual production capacity of 300,000 vehicles, the Nikkei business daily said. The firm will build the plant near its production base in Manesar near New Delhi, where Suzuki has already been producing 300,000 units a year with its Indian partner, the daily’s evening edition said.
■BANKING
US failures hit 89 this year
US bank regulators closed four Midwestern banks and one in Arizona on Friday, bringing to 89 the number of US banks to fail this year as deteriorating loans continue to take their toll on financial institutions. The five failures will cost the FDIC deposit insurance fund an estimated US$401.3 million, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said. Last year, 25 US banks were seized by officials, up from only three in 2007.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
REACTIONS: While most analysts were positive about TSMC’s investment, one said the US expansion could disrupt the company’s supply-demand balance Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) new US$100 billion investment in the US would exert a positive effect on the chipmaker’s revenue in the medium term on the back of booming artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from US chip designers, an International Data Corp (IDC) analyst said yesterday. “This is good for TSMC in terms of business expansion, as its major clients for advanced chips are US chip designers,” IDC senior semiconductor research manager Galen Zeng (曾冠瑋) said by telephone yesterday. “Besides, those US companies all consider supply chain resilience a business imperative,” Zeng said. That meant local supply would
BIG INVESTMENT: Hon Hai is building the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art AI chips, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said The construction of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) massive artificial intelligence (AI) server plant near Guadalajara, Mexico, would be completed in a year despite the threat of new tariffs from US President Donald Trump, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), is investing about US$900 million in what would become the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art GB200 AI chips, Lemus said. The project consists of two phases: the expansion of an existing Hon Hai facility in the municipality of El Salto, and the construction of a
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