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.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
RSS