The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday announced that listed companies will be allowed to book their gains in real-estate investments based on market value next year.
The commission said in a statement that it would allow listed companies to use the so-called “market value method” to calculate their investment gains from the new fiscal year next year.
The commission said listed firms will be also allowed to use the income approach to evaluate their property assets owned for investment purposes, rather than the “cost method.”
Following the implementation of the international financial reporting standards (IFRS) accounting rule this year, listed companies are required by the commission to registered their real-estate investment gains by using “cost method” or comparing with their purchase prices.
The commission said sizable real-estate investments — with each project accounting for 20 percent of a listed firm’s paid-in capital or priced at more than NT$300 million (US$10.14 million) — would need professional appraisals by a third party, the statement said.
The latest relaxation is likely to boost net value of listed firms and helps enhance financial institutions' and life insurers’ capital adequacy ratio in particular, analysts said.
Separately, domestic securities brokers are expected to see extra earnings contribution from foreign currency exchange transactions, especially those associated with foreign deposits and assets, following the latest deregulation announced by the central bank.
Under current regulations, if consumers want to buy foreign currency-denominated securities through brokerages, they have to exchange currencies through banks first.
However, the monetary authority on Monday said it would allow Taiwanese brokerages to perform forex services for their clients without the need to go through banks, according to the central bank’s statement on its Web site.
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
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