Taiwanese banks could better tap into the Chinese market if Beijing were to waive the statutory three-year grace period and allow Taiwanese banks immediate access to yuan-related business, pundits said yesterday.
“The nation’s financial regulator has promised [to negotiate with its Chinese counterpart] to ease the grace period before Taiwanese banks are allowed to operate yuan-denominated business,” Wang Lee-rong (王儷容), director of the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research’s (中經院) Center for Economic Forecasting, told a seminar organized by the National Policy Foundation and Taiwan Competitiveness Forum.
This could help Taiwanese banks, which are already at a disadvantage given their late entry into the market, Wang said.
Should the three-year grace period be completely scrapped, “Taiwanese banks will greatly benefit and could grow into banking giants in China,” Hwang Dar-yeh (黃達業), a finance professor at National Taiwan University, said at the seminar.
Hwang agreed with Wang that the government should talk to Chinese authorities about raising the 20 percent ceiling on Taiwanese shareholding in Chinese commercial banks to 50 percent in special economic districts such as Tianjin City and Sichuan Province.
However, Chang Chun-shyoung (張春雄), a finance professor at Shih Chien University, expressed concern over granting reciprocal treatment to Chinese banks.
The entry of Chinese banks, some of which are much bigger than their Taiwanese counterparts, could pose a big challenge to an already overcrowded market, Chang said.
During his keynote speech, Vice Premier Paul Chiu (邱正雄) said that Taiwanese banks had the upper hand in developing corporate and consumer banking, laying a solid foundation for branching out into China and leveraging off a potential clientele of 50,000 China-based Taiwanese businesses there.
Chiu said that officials from both sides of the Strait are scheduled to meet next month to engage in negotiations on cross-strait financial cooperation as well as sign a financial memorandum of understanding before opening up their markets to each other.
If such an agreement were inked, it would usher in a new era in cross-strait financial exchanges, he said.
Shiina Ito has had fewer Chinese customers at her Tokyo jewelry shop since Beijing issued a travel warning in the wake of a diplomatic spat, but she said she was not concerned. A souring of Tokyo-Beijing relations this month, following remarks by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi about Taiwan, has fueled concerns about the impact on the ritzy boutiques, noodle joints and hotels where holidaymakers spend their cash. However, businesses in Tokyo largely shrugged off any anxiety. “Since there are fewer Chinese customers, it’s become a bit easier for Japanese shoppers to visit, so our sales haven’t really dropped,” Ito
The number of Taiwanese working in the US rose to a record high of 137,000 last year, driven largely by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) rapid overseas expansion, according to government data released yesterday. A total of 666,000 Taiwanese nationals were employed abroad last year, an increase of 45,000 from 2023 and the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed. Overseas employment had steadily increased between 2009 and 2019, peaking at 739,000, before plunging to 319,000 in 2021 amid US-China trade tensions, global supply chain shifts, reshoring by Taiwanese companies and
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) received about NT$147 billion (US$4.71 billion) in subsidies from the US, Japanese, German and Chinese governments over the past two years for its global expansion. Financial data compiled by the world’s largest contract chipmaker showed the company secured NT$4.77 billion in subsidies from the governments in the third quarter, bringing the total for the first three quarters of the year to about NT$71.9 billion. Along with the NT$75.16 billion in financial aid TSMC received last year, the chipmaker obtained NT$147 billion in subsidies in almost two years, the data showed. The subsidies received by its subsidiaries —
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) Chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) and the company’s former chairman, Mark Liu (劉德音), both received the Robert N. Noyce Award -- the semiconductor industry’s highest honor -- in San Jose, California, on Thursday (local time). Speaking at the award event, Liu, who retired last year, expressed gratitude to his wife, his dissertation advisor at the University of California, Berkeley, his supervisors at AT&T Bell Laboratories -- where he worked on optical fiber communication systems before joining TSMC, TSMC partners, and industry colleagues. Liu said that working alongside TSMC
RSS