Amid an increase in investment exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, Yuanta Securities Co (元大證券) president Alex Lee (李鴻基) yesterday said he expected the nation’s Hong Kong-bound investments to grow by between five and 10 times in the next three to five years.
This would help strengthen the nation’s role as a capital investor in Asia, he said.
Lee made the remark at a three-day investment forum in Taipei hosted by the local brokerage attended by heavyweight executives from 14 companies from China and Hong Kong with HK$70 billion (US$9.1 billion) in combined market capitalization.
The 14 companies include Wasion Group (威勝集團), AAC Acoustic Technologies Holdings Inc (瑞聲聲學科技控股), TCL Group and China Wind Power Co (中國風電), as well as China Power New Energy Development Ltd (中國新能源), headed by Li Xiaolin (李小琳), the only daughter of former Chinese premier Li Peng (李鵬).
The forum, which ended yesterday, attracted the participation of 60 domestic financial firms from the trust investment, life insurance, banking and venture capitalist sectors, Yuanta Securities said in a press statement.
SECURITIES
Meanwhile, two Chinese-language business newspapers reported yesterday that the Taiwanese government might allow local insurance companies to invest in Chinese securities as soon as the end of the third quarter of this year after the two sides signed an agreement last month to widen access to each other’s markets.
The papers cited Wu Chung-chuan (吳崇權), deputy director-general of the the insurance bureau under the Financial Supervisory Commission.
In a telephone interview with Bloomberg Newswire yesterday, Wu confirmed the reports, but said the plan needed to be approved first by the Executive Yuan.
Insurers in Taiwan including Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) and Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) can invest in China after gaining the status of a qualified foreign institutional investor, or QFII, in China, Wu said.
China has agreed to hasten the approval process, according to the just-signed cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).
The regulator could allow domestic insurers to invest about 10 percent of the overseas investment quota in Chinese securities including stocks, bonds, funds and exchanged-traded funds, Wu said.
INSURERS
The reports said Taiwanese insurers have around NT$10 trillion (US$312 billion) in assets and invest around 30 percent of assets overseas, which means the Taiwanese insurers may be able to invest around NT$300 billion in Chinese securities.
Insurance companies in Taiwan can now invest as much as 45 percent of their total assets abroad. As of the end of March, insurers had assets of NT$11.4 trillion, and have invested NT$3.1 trillion overseas, according to data on the FSC’s Web site.
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