Although financial regulators yesterday said that they may ax the proposal to divide trading hours on the local bourse into a morning and afternoon session, around 10 brokerage workers still showed up to protest against the proposal outside the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) building yesterday afternoon.
The number of protesters who showed up at the TSE was much smaller than had been expected after regulators decided to apply the brakes on the proposal on Thursday in the face of a strong backlash from brokerage staff and investors.
The protesters presented a letter of complaint and a list of signatures to the exchange's president Chen Ming-tai (陳明泰), and urged the stock exchange and the Financial Supervisory Commission to return to 9am-to-noon trading hours.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
The local bourse currently has a single trading session opening at 9am and closing at 1:30pm, without any break.
On Monday, commission chairman Kong Jaw-sheng (龔照勝) announced that the financial regulator was considering to extend trading to 3:30pm with a two-hour break, based on a plan proposed by the Taiwan Securities Association.
Kong said the change is intended to add extra stimulation to the stock market while providing convenience to individual investors and securities houses by introducing the break at midday.
However, the announcement immediately triggered waves of opposition from brokerage staff and investors, who said that the move would neither boost the transaction value of stock trading nor make the local bourse more "internationalized," as Kong had claimed.
According to a half-page advertisement posted in Chinese-language newspapers on Thursday, the total value of stock transactions plummeted 27.78 percent to US$717.3 billion last year from US$993.3 billion in 2000 after the current four-and-a-half-hour trading system was introduced in January 2001.
The ad also criticized a lack of communication and opinion gathering behind the proposed change, and called on securities workers to participate in the protest outside the Taiwan Stock Exchange building yesterday. A mass rally was planned for June 4.
The Financial Supervisory Commission, the stock exchange and the Securities and Futures Bureau responded to the furious criticism by saying that the proposal was still under discussion and would not be implemented within the next year or two.
"We haven't hammered out a specific timetable, as we are still uncertain how much time the brokerage houses will need to adjust their computer systems [to cope with the new trading mechanism]," Taiwan Stock Exchange chairman Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) said on Thursday.
Financial Supervisory Commission Vice Chairman Lu Daung-yen (
Protesters yesterday expressed reservations about the rally scheduled for next Saturday, saying it depends on the government's response to their appeal.
After becoming a target of public criticism, the Taiwan Securities Association urged the public to allow more discussion and opinion exchanges before any new changes are put into practice.
Kuo Chung-chien (
"If we cannot even talk about it, how can this market make any progress?" he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”