TUTORING SERVICES
Bexcellent up 34% on IPO
Shares of Bexcellent Group Holdings Ltd (精英匯集團控股), whose top tutor earns more than HK$40 million (US$5.1 million) a year, yesterday surged as much as 34 percent on their first day of trading in Hong Kong. The provider of tutoring services to Hong Kong secondary-school students was so popular that individual investors placed orders for about 289 times the stock initially available to them. Bexcellent raised HK$135 million in its initial public offering (IPO) after pricing the shares near the top of a marketed range. This was in contrast to Xiaomi Corp (小米), which two weeks ago priced its IPO at the low end. Bexcellent shares closed at HK$1.32, a 22 percent gain from the IPO price of HK$1.08.
RANKINGS
Largan tops Asia300 list
Smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) topped Nikkei’s Asia300 list of the 325 fastest-growing and most valuable companies in the region, excluding Japan. The Nikkei Asian Review, which produced the list, said it used five criteria to determine the ranking: average revenue and net profit growth, return on equity, net profit margin and the ratio of shareholder equity to total assets over the past five years. India’s TCL Technologies Holding Ltd came in second, ahead of Indonesian property developer Bumi Serpong Damai, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) tied with Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) in fourth place, Nikkei said.
PLASTICS
FPC executive out on bail
Taipei prosecutors yesterday released former high-ranking Formosa Plastics Corp (FPC, 台塑) executive Lee Sun-ju (李孫儒) on NT$5 million (US$163,634) bail as he faces allegations of receiving tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars in kickbacks from the firm’s suppliers. Lee was questioned yesterday at the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for suspected contraventions of the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法). He was in charge of procurement in his role as deputy general manager of the information technology department.
TRADE
TAITRA official upbeat
Taiwan has spent the past few years diversifying its export markets and promoting industrial transformation, which should help minimize the effects of the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China, a Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) official said on Thursday. “Even if the US-China trade war drags on, Taiwan must be prepared, but not panic,” TAITRA vice chairman Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠) said at a seminar sponsored by the Stimson Center on the impact of the trade dispute. TAITRA contacted China-based Taiwanese businesses before the trade dispute began and several forecast that it would take three to six months to gauge its impact, Liu said. “Taiwan will unavoidably be affected if the US-China trade war develops into a long drawn-out affair,” Liu said.
INVESTMENT
Green loans, bonds surge
As of the end of May, domestic banks’ total outstanding loans to the green energy sector stood at NT$1.089 trillion, while insurance companies’ investment in power plants using renewable energy sources reached NT$7.48 billion, Financial Supervisory Commission statistics showed. In addition, NT$41.8 billion of green bonds were sold in Taiwan. The numbers were up by NT$44.2 billion, NT$2.13 billion and NT$21.2 billion respectively from the levels recorded at the end of last year.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
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