Print

Mail

wiki links

Singapore exchange courts Taiwanese businesses

The Singapore Exchange (SGX) welcomes Taiwanese companies to list on its mainboard and newly transformed second board, Cata-list, an exchange official said in Taipei yesterday.

"Singapore is the most internationalized market in Asia [and] can serve Taiwanese businesses as a highly effective platform for raising capital," Lawrence Wong (黃良穎), an SGX executive vice president, told a media briefing yesterday.

Wong said that the Singapore Exchange, established in 1999, was a fast-growing market with 757 publicly listed companies and a market capitalization of US$467 billion as of January.

Nearly 38 percent of the city-state's listed companies are foreign firms, including 138 firms from China, 54 from Hong Kong, 53 from other Southeast Asian states and 19 from Taiwan.

Wong said SGX was particularly interested in wooing "fast-growing" Taiwanese companies to list on its second board, Catalist, where listings can be facilitated in five to six weeks -- compared with 12 to 18 weeks for the mainboard.

Catalist, formerly known as SESDAQ, has no financial and operational thresholds for listing, Wong said, adding that the only requirement is an endorsement from one of the applicant's appointed sponsors.

Singapore may be famous as one of the region's financial hubs, but the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) is still the best choice for Taiwanese companies, more so if the government could scrap restrictions on capital flow, said Hwang Min-juh (黃敏助), chairman of Taiwan Securities Association.

"The 40 percent capital cap on publicly traded Taiwanese companies investing in China is the only reason for them to list elsewhere, such as Hong Kong and Singapore," said Hwang, who is also chairman of SinoPac Securities Corp (永豐金證券).

Taiwan bans listed companies from investing more than 40 percent of their capital in China.

Companies seeking to succeed in Singapore must be familiar with the market there and have a highly recognizable brand name or reputation to attract local investors -- half of which are institutional investors, he said, adding that the TSE outpaces the SGX in terms of daily turnover.

Wong said two Taiwanese firms had recently exited the SGX, including Want Want Corp (旺旺集團) last September.

The TSE is also actively courting Taiwanese firms based overseas to list on the local bourse.

The local exchange sponsored a "2008 Taiwanese Enterprises Symposium," hosted by its chairman Wu Rong-i (吳榮義), in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where Taiwanese companies are among the leading manufacturers with investments totaling more than US$10 billion.

Wu said he believed the TSE would outperform its Asian peers once listing restrictions were further eased and the political uncertainty associated with the presidential election was cleared up.
This story has been viewed 889 times.