President Chen Shui-bian (
Invitations for a tea party at 3pm at the Presidential Office were sent to banks including Morgan Stanley & Co, Goldman Sachs Group, UBS AG, JP Morgan Chase & Co, Merrill Lynch & Co, Deutsche Bank AG, the officials said, without elaborating.
At the closed-door meeting, Chen will be accompanied by the nation's top economic and financial officials to exchange views with his guests on the development of the nation's capital markets and investment environment.
Chen may also take the opportunity to reach out personally to persuade overseas investors to invest in Taiwan, according to local Chinese-language news media.
Foreign investors have been net sellers for 19 straight sessions since April 27 on concerns of a rise in US interest rates and rising oil prices, unloading a net US$3.8 billion in Taiwanese stocks, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The benchmark TAIEX dropped to a nine-month low of 5,482.96 on May 17 amid heavy selling by foreign investors following a statement from China that Chen must accept Chinese sovereignty or ``face destruction by playing with fire.''
In a bid to help reverse their selling, the Ministry of Finance announced on May 18 it was relaxing restrictions on foreign investments in the nation's stock market.
The changes will allow foreign-investor trading in the futures markets and give them permission to buy "call" options and sell "put" options. In addition, they would no longer need approval from the central bank's foreign exchange department for investment in the domestic stock market, the ministry said.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun ordered the measures to take effect within two months.
Apart from cross-strait tensions, topics for today's meeting may also include the possible impact of China's measures to cool its overheating economy and expected changes to Taiwan's status in Morgan Stanley Capital International Inc's indices, the Central News Agency (CNA) said.
Central Bank of China Governor Perng Fan-nan (
Bankers invited to the Presidential Office include Susan Lin (
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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