The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) yesterday said that it had asked KPMG Certified Public Accountants (
"If KPMG and DTT fail to present respectively, today and tomorrow, evidence to clarify their roles in the company's financial scandal, disciplinary action may be taken against them," the SFC's vice chairman Wu Tang-chieh (吳當傑) told a news conference yesterday.
If they are found negligent in certifying Procomp's financial documents, the accounting firms may face penalties as severe as having their licenses revoked or a business suspension in accordance with Article 39 of the Accounting Law (
The commission will also launch an probe into the role of Citigroup Global Markets Taiwan Ltd, which arranged Procomp's overseas bond sale, to investigate if it violated Article 66 of the Securities Transaction Law.
If it has, similar penalties can be imposed, Wu said.
In mid-June, Procomp unexpectedly filed a restructuring proposal in a local district court and defaulted on a NT$2.98 billion corporate bond payment despite certified financial reports in March showing that the company had NT$6.3 billion worth of financial derivatives in its foreign accounts, which were later frozen for unclear reasons.
After Procomp's chairwoman Sophie Yeh (葉素菲) was detained at the weekend for interrogation on charges of breach of trust and embezzlement, the finance ministry has since been under heavy criticism for failing to spot the company's financial irregularities earlier.
Finance Minister Lin Chuan (
Lin laid the blame on Procomp's management, which he accused of intentionally covering up its poor financial performance so as not to conceal possible wrongdoing.
"To prevent such a scandal from happening again, the government can only do its best to facilitate a sound legal and regulatory environment," Lin told the same news conference.
Lin said that the government will soon revise laws to reinforce corporate governance principles and accountants' legal responsibilities.
In the proposed corporate governance law currently being drafted, all listed companies will be required to hire independent board members, who shall account for at least one fourth of the makeup of a board of directors while the importance of an auditing committee will be stressed, Lin said.
The law will also stipulate that at least half of the board members must have no family ties or business connections to the management.
Lin said that the ministry will also propose supporting measures to revise the Accounting Law so as to stress the importance of accountants' independence.
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],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day