The government yesterday proposed a set of tough new penalties for white-collar criminals whose wrongfully acquired gains reach over NT$100 million. Penalties include a minimum seven-year jail term or fines of up to NT$500 million.
"The aim is to make these criminals, if convicted, pay far greater than their returns from the criminal acts," said Gary Tseng (
The bureau's proposal, submitted to the legislature for review in early January, suggests offenders with a jail term of between one to seven years may also face fines of up to NT$20 million while those with a jail term over seven years will pay fines between NT$25 million and NT$500 million, the statement said.
Tseng vowed to combat white-collar crime, which he said the nation should make a top priority in its financial reforms.
To help domestic banks return to financial health, Tseng said that the bureau has already instructed several poorly performing banks with high non-performing loans (NPLs) to soon improve their business practices . If banks fail to meet the bureau's NPL targets, restrictions may be put on their plans to open new branches, conduct new business transactions, file re-investment applications or grant loans, the statement said.
To increase economy of scale, the government is encouraging credit units to merge. Among eight recently consolidated commercial banks, seven are still regional institutions with limited business scopes. The exception is Macoto Bank (
The Land Bank of Taiwan (
Land Bank's proposed financial assets for securitization include 40 corporate loans, worth at least NT$3 billion, and other various securities.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts