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.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,