The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday passed draft revisions to the regulation governing foreign banks’ local branches by tightening their operating capital threshold, lending credit and statutory New Taiwan-dollar-denominated assets.
Under the revisions, local branches of the 37 foreign banks would have to allocate NT$250 million (US$7.73 million) in minimum operating capital if they hold deposits of more than 500 retail account holders, up from the current NT$150 million.
Branches that only manage wholesale businesses would be required to allocate NT$200 million in minimum operation capital, the commission said.
For every new branch, the banks will have to boost their operating capital by another NT$250 million or NT$200 million for their retail or wholesale businesses respectively, up from the current NT$120 million.
Local branches would also be required to lend a minimum of 50 percent of their local deposits to local businesses, 40 percent of which would have to be in the form of NT-denominated assets such as government bonds.
“The commission hopes foreign banks will reduce their lending out of locally absorbed deposits to other overseas markets so that these deposits will make a certain degree of contribution to the local economy,” Lin Tung-liang (林棟樑), deputy director of the commission’s Banking Bureau, told a media briefing.
The commission will also cap the lending credit of the local branches at less than 20 times their net assets if they absorb retail accounts, or 30 times their net worth if they only manage wholesale accounts.
The commission will require the local branches to notify it before they wire local earnings back to their parent banks.
Bureau officials met with executives of several foreign banks on Wednesday to hear their views and most of them were positive about the revisions, Lin said.
Once the revisions take effect, a grace period of one year will be granted to foreign banks to meet the new requirements, he said.
Asked if revisions would apply to Chinese banks, FSC Chief Secretary Lu Ting-chien (盧廷劼) quoted Chairman Sean Chen (陳冲) as saying that the commission would discuss the matter once a financial memorandum of understanding is signed with China.
“The regulation would be cohesive in principle,” Lu said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last