The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said it plans to make it quicker and easier for overseas companies to sell foreign-currency bonds in Taiwan as it seeks to develop the country’s capital market.
“To attract reputable foreign companies to Taiwan, and encourage foreign portfolio investors participating in Taiwan’s capital market, the FSC will keep easing the regulations,” Chang Ya-chun (張雅珺), an official at the FSC’s Securities and Futures Bureau in Taipei, said in a phone interview yesterday.
Taiwan has shortened the time needed for regulatory scrutiny of overseas firms’ applications to seven days from 12 days and simplified data requirements, Chang said.
The nation also plans to promote electronic trading for its so-called Formosa bond market to make it more accessible, she said, without being more specific.
Deutsche Bank AG started selling dollar notes in Taiwan this week in the first sale of Formosa bonds for more than two years. Global credit markets froze shortly after BNP Paribas SA last sold foreign-currency bonds to Taiwanese investors in March 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Deutsche Bank’s sale is it’s second in Taiwan after it sold the country’s first foreign-currency bonds in October 2006.
The FSC has consulted with securities firms on improvements to the process for companies selling Formosa bonds, Chang said, declining to name the firms. No new sale applications are being processed, she said.
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