Violence was narrowly averted yesterday at a meeting between union representatives of local banks and the Financial Super-visory Commission (FSC) as union members petitioned the commission to facilitate the merger of four state-run financial institutions.
The National Federation of Bank Employees' Unions (銀行員工會) told the commission that the government's goal to consolidate the domestic financial sector was not in the best interests of bank employees.
PHOTO: THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF BANK EMPLOYEES' UNIONS
Surrounded by over 50 protesting members, the federation's secretary-general Han Shih-hsien (韓仕賢) said they are strongly opposed to the FSC's delegation of the task to a proposed mergers and acquisitions task force.
The task force will compile criteria that would only benefit foreign banks or big banking conglomerates, while failing to respect local market forces, he said.
The protest nearly turned into a fist fight after FSC Vice Chairman Lu Daung-yen (
The union members suggested that the FSC itself should facilitate the establishment of the Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控), following the proposed merger of the Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行), Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫) and Central Trust of China (中信局).
The federation urged financial authorities to play an active role in safeguarding rights of bank employees by looking into their treatment after the mergers.
Lu told union representatives that the government will respect market forces while hammering out feasible strategies to elevate the level of consolidation among local banks, which are suffering from the nation's over-banking plight.
He said that bank employees' rights are protected by labor laws, and the FSC will demand that merged banks obey and enforce these laws.
As for the proposed merger, Lu said that the FSC will have to respect the decisions of the Ministry of Finance, which is the biggest shareholder of the four state-owned banks.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
RSS