With the appointment of Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) chairman Sean Chen as vice premier expected to expedite cross-strait financial exchanges, financial shares played a leading role as the local bourse finished higher yesterday, indicating a positive response to the move, pundits said.
“Given his solid financial expertise and experience, financial developments across the Taiwan Strait will become healthier and faster,” Ray Chou (周雨田), a research fellow at Academia Sinica, told the Taipei Times by telephone.
Prior to joining the FSC, Chen served as chairman of SinoPac Financial Holding Co (永豐金控) and Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行). During his term as FSC chairman, he worked to normalize cross-strait financial relations, including in March publicizing new regulations governing cross-strait market access for the banking, securities brokerage and insurance sectors.
The Cabinet yesterday also appointed First Financial Holding Co (第一金控) chairman Chen Yuh-chang (陳裕璋) to succeed Sean Chen as FSC chairman.
He previously worked for the securities bureau under the Ministry of Finance, which was later transformed into the commission’s securities and futures bureau.
“The nomination of candidates for the five major municipalities and the small Cabinet reshuffle strengthens President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) leadership in the KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party],” Citigroup Taiwan Inc chief economist Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂) said in a client note yesterday.
“With the economy improving and the KMT more solidified, we believe the chances are increasing that the ruling KMT will win the year-end elections,” he said.
In response to Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) remark that he would announce more Cabinet changes on Monday, FSC vice chairman Lee Jih-chu (李紀珠) confirmed that she was offered three positions, including chair of Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控).
While she could remain in her current position, Ma and Wu would prefer her to take advantage of the reshuffle to broaden her experience, Lee told a media briefing yesterday.
“I like all the new posts and I am sure they [the president and the premier] will make the best arrangements for me,” she said.
After taking up the vice premiership, Sean Chen yesterday said that he would assist the premier in implementing the Cabinet’s economic and financial policies.
Pundits have said major tasks awaiting Chen include the promotion of the government-proposed economic agreement with China, free-trade agreements with other countries, boosting private investment and reducing unemployment to below five percent by the end of this year.
The local bourse rallied yesterday with the benchmark TAIEX rising 167.87 points, or 2.21 percent, to close at 7,770.57, a rise attributed both to the reshuffle of finance related Cabinet members and a surge of 148.65 points on Wall Street overnight.
“The market interpreted this as positive for financial firms. The new Cabinet will aim to get the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) signed in June as its first priority,” SinoPac Securities Corp (永豐金證券) said in a note to investors yesterday.
The financial and insurance sub-index edged up 27.85 points or 3.5 percent, to close at 823.1, outperforming all the other categories on the main bourse, Taiwan Stock Exchange’s data showed.
Bevan Yeh (葉獻文), a fund manager at Prudential Financial Securities Investment Trust Enterprise Co (保德信投信), offered a note of pointing out that the rapid shrinking of daily market turnover to under NT$100 billion in recent days indicated that investors remain cautious.
Market turnover totaled NT$97.53 billion (US$3.1 billion) yesterday on the main bourse, compared with NT$76.15 billion the previous day, according to stock exchange data.
“In the near term, there is less chance that the bulls will be able to push the TAIEX higher,” Yeh said.
He also said that a daily turnover of NT$120 billion would present a good gauge to measure improved investor sentiment.
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