TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan's stock market felt the jolts of last week's killer earthquake when it reopened Monday, with the island's world-leading computer chip companies taking the biggest beating as they struggled to restore full production.
Blue chips tumbled almost 2.7 percent in the first trading session since the Taipei Stock Exchange was closed last week by the tremor that rocked Taiwan, threatening its export-based economy.Investors globally are most concerned about the quake's impact on Taiwan's vital semiconductor industry. Manufacturers here make 10 percent of the world's chips and about 80 percent of the "motherboards" used to run personal computers.
Already, a week's worth of production has been lost, which could lead to supply glitches and higher prices in the global computer industry.
Big losers included the island's No. 1 chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., and Taiwan's top personal computer maker, Acer Inc., both falling as far as allowed under newly announced emergency measures.
Finance Minister Paul Chiu said late Sunday that shares could drop no more than 3.5 percent a day for the next two weeks, compared with the usual daily limit of 7 percent, to "ensure that market order can be sustained."
The semiconductor companies did not suffer much physical damage at their plants, located mostly in northern Taiwan, far away from the quake's epicenter in the center of the island. But power cuts kept them out of business last week, and it remains unclear how soon they can be up and running.
Electricity at the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, Taiwan's version of Silicon Valley, has returned to normal.
TSMC, the chip maker, said half of its production equipment was in operating order.
"However, it takes time to recover to normal output," TSMC spokesman Y.C. Huang said in a statement. "We will try our best to achieve this goal as soon as possible."