China is paying close attention to the slump in shares of overseas-listed Chinese companies in the wake of a string of accounting problems and is studying ways to address the issue, an official from the country’s securities regulator said.
Corporate misbehavior, unfamiliarity with the US market and some practices involved in overseas listings had all contributed to the recent investor distrust of Chinese companies, said Wang Ou (王歐), vice head of research at the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).
“First, we have to admit that some of our companies may have flaws. Second, our [companies’] understanding of the US market and the measures to tackle risk there may be inadequate,” Wang told a conference over the weekend.
Wang’s comments, the first public remarks from the CSRC since a series of accounting scandals involving Chinese companies listed in North America, coincide with a visit to Beijing by officials from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
The delegation arrived in Beijing to meet Chinese regulators to discuss cross-border oversight, hoping to sign an agreement on accounting supervision by the end of this year, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.
Audits of Chinese companies listing in the US became a hot issue after a spike in accounting scandals and shareholder lawsuits alleging fraud.
Much of the questionable accounting involved reverse mergers, a type of backdoor listing in which a foreign company merges with a US shell company.
To overcome regulatory hurdles, many Chinese companies have also set up legal structures under which control of a China-based company can be transferred to an overseas entity via certain contracts.
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