Taiwan leader fined for Facebook post
Could Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou be the first person in the world to be fined for his activities on Facebook?
Ma, who won re-election to a second term earlier this year, was on Wednesday ordered to pay T$500,000 (US$16,666) by the island’s Central Election Commission for posting a message to his Facebook campaign page on the day of the election. Continue reading »
Smartphones: HTC struggles to keep up
The results of last year’s smartphone battle show pretty clearly from the first-quarter fortunes of Samsung and HTC. While Samsung posted record profits and overtook Nokia to become the world’s biggest seller of mobile phones, HTC saw its profits fall 70 per cent, the most in a decade.
Could this year see Samsung consolidate its lead? Did Wednesday’s launch of Samsung’s latest Galaxy S3 smartphone deal another, perhaps fatal, blow to HTC, which introduced its 2012 model – the One family of smartphones – three months ago? Continue reading »
Taiwan: the taxman cometh. Or not.
It’s official. Taiwan’s finance ministry said on Thursday evening it wanted to impose new capital gains taxes on portfolio investors, after days of trying to reassure them that it had no set plan in mind and simply wanted to gather everyone’s views.
That, it seems, was not the case. Continue reading »
Taiwan screen makers: Taipei chips in
It was not too long ago that Taiwan’s now-gloomy D-Ram memory chip and flat panel industries were seen as the ‘twin stars’ of the island’s technology manufacturing sector.
So after the government stepped in three years ago to try to restructure the D-Ram industry, it is only fitting that it is now lending a hand to help Chi Mei Innolux, the island’s biggest flat panel maker and a subsidiary of Hon Hai, the world’s biggest electronics contract manufacturer. Continue reading »
Taiwan: tax plan prompts sell-off
If the Taiwan government needed any indication of how sensitive investors are to talk of a potential capital gains tax, it need look no further than the performance of the island’s shares on Thursday. The benchmark Taiex index fell by over 200 points in morning trading, the biggest fall since the beginning of this year, closing down 2 per cent at 7872.66. Continue reading »
Taiwan: new corporate taxes?
Changes are afoot in Taiwan’s tax system – and not in a good way for businesses and investors, judging by Wednesday’s first meeting of the island’s new taskforce for fiscal soundness. Continue reading »
Chongqing says ‘business as usual’
The purging of Bo Xilai has been the talk of the town in Beijing for the past week, but back in Chongqing, where Bo was the party secretary, it is business as usual.
Or at least, that was the message that Huang Qifan, Chongqing mayor, and Zhang Dejiang, the man who replaced Bo as party secretary in Chongqing, were keen to send to the western Chinese city’s big investors. Continue reading »
Taiwan: opening up to China, bit by bit
Over the past decades, Taiwanese businesses have funneled more than $200bn in direct investment into China, but there have only been $270m worth of Chinese investment into Taiwan.
That discrepancy has been a sticking point for the Taiwan government, which on the one hand wants to attract more investments to show tangible economic benefits from mending fences with China, but on the other hand is wary of any criticism that it is letting the Chinese buy up Taiwan’s prized companies and assets. So this week’s move by the government is a significant move. Continue reading »
China, Taiwan and RQFII
Now that Taiwan’s elections are over and a new cabinet has had time to settle in, investors are turning to the question, “What comes next in cross-Strait relations?”
One intriguing possibility emerged on Monday when the China Daily newspaper quoted Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, as saying that Beijing may include Taiwan in its nascent Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors programme. Continue reading »
Elpida’s fall makes waves in Taiwan
It was not as if the bankruptcy of Japan’s Elpida, the world’s third-biggest D-ram chip maker, was totally unexpected. Yukio Sakamoto, its president, warned two weeks ago that debt talks with creditors had stalled.
Still, investors were shocked when it actually happened on Monday, and nowhere was this more apparent than in the Taiwan stock market, which only resumed trading on Wednesday after a four-day long weekend. Continue reading »
Asus dodges industry gloom
Between supply disruptions from the Thai floods and continued weakness in the US and European markets, the end of last year wasn’t an easy time for many PC companies. HP saw consumer PC sales drop by a quarter, while Dell missed analysts’ profit forecasts as hard drive costs spiked.
Not so for Asus, the Taiwanese PC maker, which on Friday reported a 23 per cent increase in sales in the fourth quarter of last year compared to a year earlier, and a 21 per cent rise in net profits. Likewise, Lenovo on Thursday also reported a hefty sales increase. Continue reading »
Hon Hai pay rise could hurt investors
Hon Hai has announced it is raising the base salary of its 1m-plus workers by between 16 to 25 per cent, the first major pay hike since it doubled pay for operators and line managers in 2010 following a tragic series of suicides at its plants.
With Hon Hai, the Foxconn parent, and other Apple suppliers’ plants currently undergoing an audit by the Fair Labour Association, that’s good news, isn’t it? Not so for investors, according to HSBC head of Taiwan research Jenny Lai. Continue reading »
Taiwan: unpaid leave down, hopes up
Has Taiwan’s economy turned the corner? There are many who would say not yet. Export orders, which are forward-looking, remain anaemic, and economists expect January industrial output numbers to also be weak because of Chinese New Year.
But Wai Ho Leong, economist at Barclays Capital, argues that there is cause for optimism. Continue reading »
Hon Hai: a recovery stock?
Is the glass half full or half empty with Hon Hai? The world’s biggest contract electronics maker – and controlling shareholder in Foxconn – has faced a number of new challenges recently, but since the beginning of the year its share price has risen 27 per cent. Continue reading »
Taiwan: Early test for Ma’s 2nd term
It is less than a month since Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou won his re-election and still three months before his second term officially begins, but Ma already faces a major political challenge.
Surprisingly – even though Taiwan slipped into recession at the end of last year – the problem is not the economy. Nor is it controversy over Ma’s new cabinet. Instead, it is the tricky issue of whether Taiwan should further open itself to imports of US beef. Continue reading »
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