The Financial Supervisory Commission is currently studying ways to allow companies with 30 percent Chinese capital to be listed in the planned offshore bourse, a move that is still awaiting the green light from the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), commission officials said yesterday.
The proposal to raise the ceiling of Chinese capitalization to 30 percent in defining "Chinese capitalized enterprises" was discussed in a meeting involving the commission, the MAC and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, commission spokesman Lin Chung-cheng (
The original restriction was set at 20 percent, he said.
A Chinese-language newspaper reported earlier yesterday that FSC chairman Kong Jaw-sheng (龔照勝) had stated the commission is planning to let companies with 30-percent Chinese capital be listed in the planned, foreign currency-denominated offshore stock exchange, which will be inaugurated next year.
Limited group
Taiwan has strict regulations over publicly-listed firms' investment in China. Establishing an alternative offshore bourse is designed to help China-based Taiwanese companies raise funds from domestic capital markets and foreign investors. Raising the ceiling on the allowed percentage of Chinese capital to 30 percent will allow more firms to list.
The commission expects as many as 20 companies to go public in the offshore bourse as soon as it opens, the newspaper cited Kong as saying. The total number of listed companies could be controlled at less than 200, he added.
Foreign enterprises with partial Chinese capitalization that apply to be listed on the offshore stock exchange may escape the restriction, Lin said. "As no one [overseas companies] will come if we impose these restrictions on them," he said.
The commission hopes that subsidiary firms, which Tai-wanese companies set up and register in places like the Cayman Islands in order to invest in China -- but have no Chinese capital -- can also be publicly traded on the offshore bourse, Lin added.
Waiting for kong
Lin said the commission is waiting for Kong, currently on an overseas roadshow, to relay foreign investors' viewpoints in the negotiations with the involved agencies to come up with feasible measures.
The 2005 Taiwan Global Investment Forum, organized by Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC, was held in New York last week and moved to London earlier this week to try and attract foreign investors.
During the two-day forum in New York, Kong gave a speech on the latest developments in Taiwanese financial markets, attracting the participation of 250 foreign institutional investors and financial professionals who manage US$2.6 trillion worth of assets in New York and 319 British institutional investors who control US$3.29 trillion in assets in London, according to the commission.
Following the New York leg, Kong and other Taiwanese delegates has proceeded to London to conduct another seminar.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to