Premier Su Tseng-chang (
Banks made public the names of major defaulters on loans exceeding NT$100 million (US$3.02 million) over the past two days to comply with an instruction issued by the Financial Supervisory Commission on March 1, which required all banks, including foreign bank branches, to post the details of major bad loan accounts on their Web sites by the middle of the month.
Nearly 1,500 individuals and corporate bodies had defaulted on a total of NT$371.93 billion in loans as of last June, according to data compiled by the commission.
"These bad debtors have created lots of problems for our banks," Su said, when he was approached by reporters as he entered the legislature for a meeting early yesterday morning.
Referring to the published lists of major defaulters, Su said most had owed a great deal of money since the authoritarian era.
"We will not tolerate or allow this to happen in the future," Su said. "In addition, the government will do whatever it takes to retrieve the money owed by these bad debtors ... The Democratic Progressive Party government has done a good job controlling and preventing bad debts and we will continue to do so."
The premier also said that it the government would take on the task of preventing future potential corruption, and ensure that debtors were no longer able to bribe government officials.
However, when asked how the government would achieve this, and how the money could be recovered now that most of the bad debtors had fled Taiwan, Su did not make any further comment.
An executive from a local bank said on Thursday that the government's decision to force banks to publish the names of those who had defaulted on large loans would not help banks recoup their losses.
Citing the example of Chen You-hao (
Most of these debtors were already known to the public, the executive said, adding that he doubted publication of the list would subject them to any additional pressure.
Instead of flogging dead horses, the executive said, the government should authorize the banks to publish the names of current major borrowers who have been overdue in the repayment of debts for more than three months.
Referring to cases where debtors continue living an extravagant life style despite still owing banks an excessive sum of money, Vice Minister of Justice Lee Chin-yung (
Upon completion of the draft clause, it would be forwarded to the Judicial Yuan as a reference for an amendment to the Bankruptcy Law (破產法), Lee said.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts