Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday denied speculation that Taiwan would allow Chinese banks to merge with or invest in Taiwanese banks or financial institutions.
Asked to comment on reports that Chinese banks would now be allowed to merge with Taiwan-based banks and financial institutions, Wu told the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club that this was not the case.
“So far, it is not the case that Chinese banks can buy Taiwanese banks,” Wu said.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
He said, however, that during talks on a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China, discussions could touch on allowing one or two Chinese banks to open branches in Taiwan.
“We might discuss one or two Chinese branches being able to establish themselves in Taiwan,” the premier said, “but there will be no discussions on acquiring Taiwanese banks.”
Wu, who emphasized that the administration would take a “step-by-step” approach to cross-strait agreements, said that an ECFA would not be discussed during the fourth round of talks between the Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait in Taichung later this month.
Negotiations on an ECFA, he said, would start at the beginning of next year.
Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said later yesterday that the two sides would begin formal negotiations on an ECFA after the Lunar New Year, which falls in mid-February.
Earlier yesterday, Wu told representatives of the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (CNAIC, 工商協進會) that Taiwan’s industrial development would be jeopardized without an ECFA in view of the threats posed by ASEAN Plus One.
With the ASEAN Plus One to take effect next year, the average export tariffs on Taiwanese goods to China will be 9 percent more than those of ASEAN countries — a disadvantage that could put companies off setting up production facilities in Taiwan, he said.
Taiwan will be further marginalized when a free-trade zone is formed among ASEAN with China, South Korea and Japan, he said.
CNAIC chairman Theodore Huang (黃茂雄) said that the government should allay companies’ skepticism on the potential impact of an ECFA and come up with plans to help affected industries.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
RSS