The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday announced plans to set up a mechanism by the end of this year to allow small businesses to raise capital in the nation’s over-the-counter market, as part of a government effort to help boost creative industries.
The business startup board, taking cues from the US Jump-start Our Business Startups Act enacted in April last year, aims to encourage funding of local companies that have innovative ideas, but which lack the money to carry them out, outgoing FSC securities and futures bureau director-general Huang Tien-mu (黃天牧) told a media briefing.
Huang is about to assume the No. 2 position in the FSC, after the Cabinet recently tapped his predecessor Wu Tang-chieh (吳當傑) as new vice finance minister.
Only firms with capital of NT$50 million (US$1.67 million) or less are qualified to apply to list on the startup board and their shares may not be traded on the open market, Huang said.
Interested companies may wait for up to two years before the GRETAI Securities Market approves the listing application, he said.
Potential candidates are firms in the creative and agricultural industries across Taiwan, but may encompass all sectors, Huang said.
“We hope about 70 companies can list on the startup board next year and raise a total of NT$210 million,” Huang said.
As of July this year, about 64 percent of Taiwanese companies, or 390,000, have a capitalization of between NT$1 million and NT$10 million, the commission said, adding that another 18 percent, or 110,000 firms, have a capitalization of between NT$10 million and N$50 million.
The deteriorating international business environment has driven the government to place more emphasis on a services economy in the hope of reducing Taiwan’s dependence on external demand and creating job opportunities more evenly in different parts of the country.
Successful creative projects could be a film production, activities to strengthen public appreciation of rural life and other ventures with innovative value-adds, the commission said.
While institutional and individual investors may both apply to buy startup shares, the commission keeps a cap of NT$60,000 on individual investors to limit investment risks, Huang said. Further, startup companies may not increase their capital by more than NT$15 million a year, he added.
The commission encourages companies listed on the startup board to move onto the emerging stock market and the main board, as they grow in scale, Huang said.
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained