Come to Taiwan: commission
International corporations invested by Taiwanese businessmen overseas wishing to raise capital from the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) should set up new companies in Taiwan and apply to the Securities and Futures Commission for first listing, a commission official said yesterday.
The official said that Taiwanese-invested companies in China or other countries may also raise capital from the TSE through the issuance of Taiwan Depository Receipts (TDRs), under the condition that they are already first-listed companies in the following 16 stock exchanges -- namely the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) , NASDAQ, London, Frankfurt, Pan-Europe in Paris and Amsterdam, Italy, Toronto, Australia, Tokyo, Osaka, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Thailand and Johannesburg.
Companies listed on the stock exchange of Hong Kong are not entitled to the "secondary listing" practice, however, due to the complications involving companies with Chinese capital.
Factory closures double
The number of factory closures almost doubled in the first seven months of this year as local companies shift production to China, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement yesterday.
Between January and last month, factory closures rose to 3,361 from 1,865 a year earlier, with closures more than quadrupling to 1,228 in July alone, the ministry said.
Taiwanese companies' investment in China rose almost a third in the first seven months of this year, the ministry said last week.
Meanwhile, new factory registrations in Taiwan rose 7.7 percent to 478 last month from 444 a year earlier. In the first seven months, factory openings climbed 14 percent to 2,723 from 2,391.
Phone-sex firms look to China
Cheap labour costs in China is said to have taken away even the jobs of Taiwanese phone sex operators, a Chinese-language newspaper said yesterday.
Several dozen telephone pornographic companies have extended their operations to China by hiring Chinese women to do the job, the newspaper said.
The paper said that hiring a Taiwanese woman costs between NT$20,000 and NT$30,000 (US$571 and US$857) a month, but it cost just NT$3,000 to hire a Chinese hostess.
A recent raid at a company which operates a porn phone hot line showed that the owner hired more than 200 Chinese women in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen to answer calls from Taiwan.
Depositories sign memorandum
Executives of the Taiwan Securities Central Depository Co. (TSCD) and the New York-based Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. (DTCC) signed a memorandum of understanding in New York on Monday for the exchange of information on clearance and settlement services for equities, bonds and securities.
A TSCD spokesman said the company will send two groups of its staff to New York next month to receive clearance services training at DTCC headquarters.
Bank lending increases
Taiwan bank lending rose in July for a third straight month, according to statistics provided by the nation's central bank.
Total loans by 405 financial institutions -- including the central bank, domestic banks, foreign bank branches, credit cooperatives and others -- rose 1.7 percent in July to NT$13.6 trillion from a year ago, the central bank said.
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned weak against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.014 to close at NT$34.194 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
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