The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday fined Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ) NT$4 million (US$125,976) for violating rules on sales of yuan-linked target redemption forwards (TRF) to unfit customers.
The commission found that ANZ facilitated TRF sales to unfit customers by helping them meet the criteria for professional investors, which is required for purchasing complex derivative products.
Following volatile movements in the value of the yuan, investors have been left with massive losses from the yuan-linked derivative.
Photo: Reuters
ANZ’s efforts in disclosing assessment risk profiles for clients were inadequate, the commission said, adding that the bank also helped its customers establish offshore accounts and subsidiaries to facilitate TRF sales.
As of 2014, the commission had imposed about NT$76 million in fines on 17 banks. HSBC Bank (Taiwan) Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) is the only foreign bank that has not been penalized for TRF-related infractions, the commission said.
Separately, the commission also gave the nod to Hotai Motor Co’s (和泰汽車) plan to acquire a 99.73 percent stake in Zurich Insurance (Taiwan) Ltd (蘇黎世產險) for less than NT$6.9 billion.
The commission has set a number of conditions on the deal, which is expected to be completed on Jan. 17.
Hotai, the nation’s leading car dealer, would be required to ensure the long-term sustainable operation of the insurer for at least a decade and its future insurance unit must meet the 300 percent risk-based capital ratio requirement, Insurance Bureau Deputy Directory-General Shih Chiung-hwa (施瓊華) said.
Hotai, which operates Toyota and Lexus dealerships in the nation, first announced its intent to acquire the insurer in June, when it said it hoped to build a 15 percent share of the local car insurance market.
The company has a 32.8 percent hold on the nation’s new car sales, translating to about 12 percent of the local market for auto insurance, Shih 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],”
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