China Merchants Bank Co (招商銀行) is among at least five Chinese banks applying to open branches in Taiwan as relations between the two governments improve, said Ma Weihua (馬蔚華), chief executive officer of China’s fifth-biggest lender by market value.
“We’re not the only one applying,” Ma said in an interview in London last week before the opening ceremony for the lender’s first unit in the British capital. “There are five or six.”
China Merchants has “participated in the discussion” of a financial-services agreement between China and Taiwan, he said.
China and Taiwan are working on an agreement to allow cross-strait investment between financial firms, after five decades of restricted access. Bank of China Ltd (中國銀行), the nation’s largest foreign-exchange lender with over 800 outlets overseas, said on April 27 it wants to be the first Chinese bank to set up a branch in Taiwan.
‘GENERALLY AGREED’
A memorandum of understanding between China and Taiwan is “generally agreed,” with “only some divergence in details such as the entry requirement,” Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行) chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮) said on July 9 after she returned from an official visit to Beijing with a delegation of Taiwanese bankers, Central News Agency reported.
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd (中國工商銀行), the world’s largest lender by market value, and Bank of Communications Ltd (交通銀行) have also said they plan to set up branches in Taiwan after an agreement is reached.
Beijing-based Bank of China is the only Chinese bank allowed to conduct foreign-currency exchange with Taiwan dollars.
Closer ties with China, Taiwan’s biggest trading partner, could help Taiwan speed up recovery from its first recession since the technology bubble burst in 2001. The economy shrank a record 10.2 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier.
ACCORDS
China on April 29 said it would end a ban on investments in Taiwan from May 1 after accords signed on April 26 allowed cross-strait operations by financial-services companies, expanded direct flights and established cooperation in fighting crime.
Taiwan the same day said it would begin accepting applications from Chinese institutional investors to buy Taiwan’s securities.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained