TAIEX
Foreigner stock buys surge
Foreign investors last week bought a net NT$7.73 billion (US$265.23 million) of local shares after buying a net NT$2.18 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had sold NT$773.03 billion of local shares since the beginning of the year, the exchange said. The top three shares bought by foreign investors last week were Innolux Corp (群創光電), Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) and AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), while the top three shares sold by foreign investors were Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) and China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控), it said. As of Friday, the market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$20.56 trillion, or 40.73 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
BIOMEDICAL
Local drug gets foreign deal
PharmaEssentia Corp’s (藥華醫藥) board of directors on Sunday gave approval to a non-binding term sheet to authorize a foreign company to market PharmaEssentia’s blood cancer drug Ropeg in the Latin American market. PharmaEssentia would disclose the name of the firm and the income generated from the deal when a formal agreement is signed, it said in a regulatory filing. The number of people with the rare type of blood cancer, polycythemia vera, is estimated to be more than 100,000 in Latin America, but as the area has a comparatively low insurance coverage rate, the companies plan to target specific groups initially. PharmaEssentia has obtained marketing approval for Ropeg in Taiwan, South Korea, the EU and the US. It holds an upbeat outlook for the second quarter given robust sales of Ropeg in the US.
ENERGY
Taipei signs Somaliland deal
Taiwan and Somaliland signed an agreement on energy and mineral resources cooperation last week that Taiwan’s office in Somaliland said provides a legal foundation for joint resource exploration, drilling activities and other initiatives. A task force is to facilitate information sharing, exploration and drilling, training and capacity building, Taiwan’s representative office in Hargeisa said on social media. CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) in December last year signed a farm-out agreement with UK-based Genel Energy PLC to acquire 49 percent of the rights to explore hydrocarbon resources in the SL10B/13 mining area, and the deal was later approved by the Somaliland government. Taiwan Representative to Somaliland Allen Lou (羅震華) said the first exploration well is to be drilled next year.
CRYPTOCURRENCY
XREX enters European market
XREX Inc (鏈科), a Taipei provider of blockchain cross-border payment solutions, obtained approval from Lithuania’s regulator to provide cryptocurrency services in the country, enabling it to set foot in the European market. The company said it would mainly target firms based in Lithuania, and aims to serve as a bridge to link firms in advanced economies and those in emerging markets. As a registered cryptoasset service provider in Lithuania, XREX would be able to help customers exchange cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, provide a virtual wallet service and act as an online payment guarantor similar to BitCheck, it said. Established in 2018, the company has received regulatory approvals from Estonia, Canada and the US over the past few months, while it is applying to enter the Singaporean market, it said.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
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