Taiwan and China promised yesterday to mull easing requirements for setting up branch offices and expanding financial services across the Taiwan Strait, financial regulators from the two sides said.
The announcement came after the regulators met for two hours in Taipei for the first time after Taiwan and China granted market access to each other’s banks last year.
The two sides agreed to meet twice a year in the future with Taiwan and China taking turns to host the talks about financial deregulation, inspection, supervision and other related issues.
“The Chinese side promised to make a positive response to pleas by Taiwanese lenders wishing to open branch offices and operate Chinese yuan businesses more quickly and easily,” Kuei Hsien-nung (桂先農), director-general of the Financial Supervisory Commission’s Banking Bureau, told a media briefing.
Currently, domestic financial firms may tap into the Chinese market via two of three options — setting up branches and subsidiaries or owning stakes in Chinese peers.
Taiwanese branches, which turn a profit one year after they have been established, may apply to process loans and savings deposits in Chinese yuan for Taiwanese clients.
Lenders have pressed for the removal of the one-year requirement and the restriction to Taiwanese clients, saying the regulations do not enable them to compete with other foreign banks in China.
Fan Wenzhong (范文仲), head of international department of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said more discussions were necessary.
“Good news will soon be published,” Fan told reporters after the closed-door meeting between China Banking Regulatory Commission Chairman Liu Mingkang (劉明康) and Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Chen Yuh-chang (陳裕璋).
The establishment of a mechanism for regular talks is an -important step as they will help lay the ground rules for the fledgling cross-strait banking ties, Fan said.
Six Taiwanese banks have set up branches in China, with another three awaiting regulatory approval. Two others have opened representative offices in China, while four Chinese lenders have representative offices in Taiwan.
Chinese banks may apply to upgrade their liaison offices in Taiwan to branches one year after they have been opened.
Chinese banks have also voiced their wish to own stakes in their Taiwanese peers as strategic partners rather than purchase stocks on the Taiwanese bourse via institutional investors.
In March last year, the Financial Supervisory Commission published measures allowing Chinese banks to own up to a 5 percent stake in Taiwanese lenders, but added more discussion was needed about when the regulations should take effect.
“We will actively study the timing pending the development of the financial market,” Kuei said.
Some experts have expressed concern over the introduction of Chinese capital, saying the local banking sector, fragmented and overcrowded, is vulnerable to acquisition attempts.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts