The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) leaves much to be desired in demonstrating efficiency and consistency when carrying out its duties, participants at a seminar on financial reform said yesterday.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅), who is known for exposing financial scandals, said the nation suffers from overbanking and the financial sector must go through consolidation in order to remain competitive.
Chiu said the crowded field made avoiding conflict of interests difficult for the financial regulator, as some top FSC officials previously worked in the banking sector.
“The close ties causes them to hesitate when they are called upon to investigate irregular activities,” Chiu said, citing former FSC chief Gordon Chen (陳樹) as an example. Chen served as an independent supervisor at Taishin Securities Co (台証證), a subsidiary of Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控), before being appointed to head the FSC.
Chiu said Chen refused to address reported flaws related to Taishin Financial and had to step down late last year.
Chiu said FSC chair Sean Chen (陳冲) had displayed reluctance in dealing with takeover disputes between China Development Financial Holding Co (中華開發金控) and Taiwan International Securities Corp (金鼎證券) because of his ties to the former.
Hwang Dar-yeh (黃達業), a finance professor at National Taiwan University, echoed the concerns.
Huang said the legislature should enact laws barring banking officials from assuming government positions.
“It will be hard for people to regulate their former employers,” Huang said. “There should be laws to address the issue.”
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
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],”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day