MOF told to clean up TAMCO
The Control Yuan, the government’s top watchdog body, yesterday said it has passed a motion for the Ministry of Finance (MOF) to improve its handling of an assets management company, after reports of misappropriation of funds surfaced earlier this year.
Chen Sung-chu (陳松柱), a former chairman of Taiwan Asset Management Corp (TAMCO, 台灣金聯), was accused of pocketing NT$26 million (US$807,000), which included the company’s investment returns and employee bonuses, during his 19-month tenure.
The partially state-owned TAMCO was founded in 2001 as the nation’s first asset management company, with the aim of helping local financial institutions reduce bad loans and improve their finances.
Chen was appointed chairman in July 2008 by the MOF to represent the government as one of TAMCO’s shareholders.
“The MOF, which is supposed to be responsible for supervising the financial sector, failed to fulfill its duty with regard to the operations of TAMCO,” the Control Yuan said in its motion.
“As a shareholder of TAMCO, the ministry also failed to correct TAMCO’s conduct, which allowed Chen to misappropriate the company’s funds,” the motion stated.
Apart from Chen, 58 other TAMCO employees were found to have dipped into the company’s investment profits.
So far, 55 of them have returned the money, while four others, including Chen, have refused to do so.
UMC sales up 11.34%
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s second-largest contract chipmaker, yesterday posted NT$29.75 billion in better-than-expected sales in the second quarter of this year, up 11.34 percent quarter-on-quarter.
In April, UMC vowed to post a quarterly sales growth of 7 percent to 9 percent.
Last month, UMC recorded NT$10.34 billion in sales, up 2.43 percent from May and the highest in almost 32 months.
Strong global demand has led to a full utilization of the company’s production facilities.
Taiwan not ‘developed’: FTSE
Taiwan needs to improve in some areas, including the availability of its local currency, before it can be upgraded to the category of “developed” market, Paul Hoff, FTSE Group’s managing director for Asia-Pacific, said in Taipei yesterday.
The outcome of the next review will be announced in September, and Hoff did not say when Taiwan may be raised.
The London-based index compiler currently ranks Taiwan as an “advanced emerging” market and the nation is on the watch list for an upgrade. A higher ranking would help attract more investments that are benchmarked against FTSE’s indexes.
Stock exchanges in MOU talks
The Taiwan stock exchange is in talks with the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges on a memorandum of understanding for closer cooperation, Lawrence Shan (單高年), senior vice president at the Taipei-based exchange said at a forum yesterday. He declined to say when it would be signed.
NT dollar up slightly
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday gained by NT$0.035 to close at NT$32.185 against the US dollar on turnover of US$562 million.
Meanwhile, the nation’s central bank yesterday issued NT$80 billion in certificates of deposit, more than the NT$50.3 billion that matured, the monetary authority said in a statement on its Web site. However, the bank warned in another statement that it may tighten inspection of home loans in the Taipei area to crack down on banks that dodge mortgage rules.
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