Taiwan is in talks with Hong Kong on allowing the dual listing of exchange traded funds (ETFs) on both stock markets, Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Chairman Hu Sheng-cheng (胡勝正) said yesterday.
"The Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (證交所) and GRETAI Securities Market (櫃買中心) are talking to their counterparts in Hong Kong, inking an memorandum of understanding [MOU] to allow the dual listing of ETFs on both Taipei and Hong Kong bourses," Hu told a legislative session yesterday.
ETFs are index funds that follow the market's benchmark and trade just like stocks on major stock exchanges.
The commission was also looking forward to facilitating the local bourses' plans to list ETFs on other Asian markets, including Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Thailand, while inviting other countries' ETFs to list here, Hu said.
The Taiwan-Hong Kong deal is viewed as a cross-strait deregulatory move that will allow Taiwanese investors to buy Chinese stocks via ETFs while allowing Chinese and Hong Kong investors to trade Taiwanese shares.
But China-bound investments and New Taiwan dollar-yuan forex could also be involved, so the SEC would discuss those issues with the Mainland Affairs Council and the central bank before inking the MOU, Hu said.
In related news, Uni-President China Holdings Ltd (統一企業中國控股公司), the Chinese unit of Taiwan's biggest processed food maker, may raise as much as HK$4.13 billion (US$531 million) from a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) with its parent, the firm said in an e-mail.
Uni-President China and parent Uni-President Enterprises Corp (
The high end of the range for the sale of a 25 percent stake values Uni-President China at HK$16.5 billion, the e-mail said.
Uni-President China, the nation's largest maker of juice drinks and third-biggest supplier of instant noodles, is raising capital to expand, promote its brands and make strategic investments. Sales of pure fruit juices and diluted juice products in China averaged 12.5 percent annual growth to 11.8 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) last year from 2004.
"I like their market shares in the drinks area, although the noodles business is kind of flat or going down," said Andy Mantel, Hong Kong-based managing director of Pacific Sun Investment Management Ltd.
"The penetration rates for the tea, the juices and carbonated drinks are still very low," he said.
Uni-President has been expanding sales of yogurt and drinks -- including tea, coffee and bottled water -- to offset stagnant revenue and losses from instant noodles. Juice product sale in China, in particular, has benefited from rising household incomes, increasing health consciousness and better product packaging, the share sale document said, quoting market researcher ACNielsen.
About 60 percent of the shares being offered in the IPO are new and the rest are being sold by a firm wholly owned by Uni-President.
After several years flying high as Asia’s best Nvidia Corp proxy, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is increasingly vying with other artificial intelligence (AI) stocks for investor attention. Stock traders are chasing a wider array of beneficiaries as mainstream usage of AI creates demand for hardware beyond the most-advanced chips TSMC makes for Nvidia. Subthemes from the deepening memory crunch to advances in robotics are also luring bids. At the same time, investment caps on single stocks are pushing funds to diversify, while retail investors long familiar with TSMC through its US depositary receipts are being offered a broader set of
TECH RELIANCE: Growth is increasingly reflecting an unequal K-shaped distribution, where technology sectors outperform and other industries struggle, an expert said Standard Chartered Bank has significantly raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth to 9.5 percent this year, up from 7.6 percent previously, citing surging artificial intelligence (AI) demand driving exports, semiconductor production and investment. The upgrade reflects a sustained AI supercycle that continues to fuel demand for advanced chips and technology infrastructure, which form the backbone of Taiwan’s exports, the bank said in a report this week. “We raise our 2026 growth forecast to reflect a much stronger-than-expected first-quarter GDP figure,” Standard Chartered senior economist for greater China and Asia Tommy Wu (胡東安) said in the report. Driven largely by a 35.3 percent
Two of Taiwan’s international carriers, Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), have retained the five-star airline rating awarded by international airline review organization Skytrax. Starlux was awarded the distinction for a second consecutive year, while EVA Air received it for the 11th straight year, Skytrax said in statements released yesterday and on Thursday last week, respectively. The five-star rating is considered one of the airline industry's highest honors and is awarded following professional audits of airline product and frontline service standards, Skytrax said. The ratings are based on in-depth assessments using unified global quality standards rather than customer review scores
Tokyo Electron's Taiwan unit today said in a written response that it respects the judicial process, takes the court ruling seriously and would not appeal in the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) trade secrets case. Last month, a court fined the Taiwan unit of Japan's Tokyo Electron NT$150 million (US$4.74 million) in a case involving trade secrets related to TSMC's sensitive chip technology.
RSS