Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Newcrest Mining Ltd head up a list of 40 large companies with the best corporate governance in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a study conducted by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.
The two highest-ranked Asian markets are Singapore and Hong Kong, according to the study, which was conducted in conjunction with the Asian Corporate Governance Association. The “excessive” influence of billionaire-owners in the region has been a stumbling block to better governance, the report said.
A series of scandals plaguing companies from Japan’s Olympus Corp to Hong Kong’s Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd (新鴻基地產) erased billions in market value, heightening awareness of corporate governance among investors. Short-sellers have also targeted Chinese companies including Sino-Forest Corp (嘉漢林業), suggesting that accounts have been manipulated.
“We’re still allowing companies to list that arguably shouldn’t be listed,” Asian Corporate Governance Association secretary-general Mark Allen said yesterday at a press conference in Hong Kong. “We need to have a better IPO process in Hong Kong and Singapore.”
Family control of companies in Asia are a source of conflict of interests, while the “excessive” influence of billionaire owners has hindered regulatory reforms, the report said. About half of the 864 companies covered in the report are controlled by shareholders whose primary financial interest is not in the listed company.
“The risks come when the controlling shareholder has a lot of other interests and might use the listed company to help out the private interest,” Amar Gill, CLSA’s head of Asia research, said at the conference yesterday.
The average profit-to-earnings ratio of markets deemed to have better corporate governance is 14, compared with 12.6 for those with lower scores, according to the report. Other companies that scored well for corporate governance include Tokyo Gas Co, BHP Billiton Ltd, Public Bank Bhd, HSBC Holdings PLC and Standard Chartered PLC, according to the report.
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