Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Kong Jaw-sheng (龔照勝) yesterday paid a low-profile visit to Hong Kong, becoming the highest-ranking Taiwanese finance official to visit the former British colony and Asian financial hub.
Kong's office yesterday confirmed that he had been invited by the Investment Company Institute (ICI) to give a speech on Taiwan's newly established financial regulatory body and its policy changes at the US association's biannual conference in Asia.
The ICI is the national association of the US investment industry. Founded in 1940, its membership includes approximately 8,500 mutual funds, 600 closed-ended funds, 140 exchange-traded funds and five sponsors of unit investment trusts.
Its mutual fund members represent 87.7 million individual shareholders and manage approximately US$7.8 billion in investor assets, according to the institute.
Kong is slated to return home early this morning to take part in inter-party negotiations on the Financial Restructuring Fund (金融重建基金) bill in the legislature today.
Local Chinese-language media yesterday speculated that, during his two-day trip, Kong would ask the conference's participants to invest in Taiwan and to explore the possibility for Taiwanese mutual funds to raise capital there, according to a Chinese-language newspaper, which cited unidentified government officials.
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