The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) is to continue looking into measures to improve corporate governance by bolstering the independence of outside directors.
The Company Act (公司法) allows a government agency or a juristic person to act as a shareholder of a company and be elected as a company director or supervisor, and appoint a neutral person as its proxy on the invitee’s board of directors.
The act has been criticized by industry and legal experts, who have said that major shareholders can easily replace proxies and their undue influence compromises the independence of outside directors, limiting their ability to carry out their supervisory duties.
“We want to see more neutral board members rather than proxies of major shareholders,” FSC Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said.
“We also want to set a new rule that requires companies to allocate more than half of total board seats to independent directors,” Koo said, adding that the boardrooms of many of the nation’s listed companies are occupied by institution-appointed proxies.
Koo’s comments came after a round of draft revisions to the act were approved by the Executive Yuan last week, but did not include changes that would curb the influence of major shareholders.
The Company Act encompasses all publicly trade firms, Koo said, adding that the commission would work within its jurisdiction to explore possible amendments to the Banking Act (銀行法).
The commission is focused on the financial sector, where more stringent regulatory compliance is needed, Koo said.
In related news, 272 independent directors resigned between 2014 and the first half of this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange data showed.
The flight of independent directors is due to low pay relative to the severe potential legal consequences they could face if they are unable to detect and prevent mismanagement or poor operating performance, Koo said.
Independent directors are facing 13-class action lawsuits and about NT$2.24 billion (US$74.8 million) in damages, Securities and Futures Investors Protection Center data showed.
Contrary to notions that directors are highly paid, 92.8 percent, or 3,429 independent directors, are paid less than NT$2 million per year, while 255, or 6.9 percent, were paid between NT$2 million and NT$10 million, Koo said, citing FSC data.
Only 0.03 percent, or 12 independent directors, were paid more than NT$10 million last year, Koo 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
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
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],”
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