Dual-class shares will likely not be introduced to the nation’s capital market due to concerns about corporate governance, Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said.
A dual-class share structure allows a company to issue various types of shares with differently weighted voting rights. Hong Kong introduced the system in a bid to attract promising start-up companies, with Singapore to follow suit in July.
“Based on our internal assessment, the dual-class share structure is not expected to be a part of the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and the Taipei Exchange (TPEX), as the majority of investors are local retail investors whose interests must be safeguarded by corporate governance standards,” Koo told lawmakers during a question-and-answer session at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
Dual-class shares would allow minority shareholders such as a company founder to give themselves a disproportionately high weighting in voting rights and give company insiders a degree of anonymity to avoid supervision, Koo said.
The listing requirements are highly accessible to biotechnology firms after their intellectual properties are granted certification from regulators, while applicants in Hong Kong must meet market value requirements, Koo said.
Separately, in the wake of Shanghai’s speedy listing approval for Foxconn Industrial Internet Co (FII, 富士康工業互聯網), a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the commission has prepared measures to loosen limits imposed on Chinese investors.
Chinese investors would be allowed to acquire up to 30 percent of a foreign enterprise’s shares on the TWSE and the TPEX without taking a controlling stake, the commission said.
Chinese investors would also be given an accelerated approval pathway under the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Investment Commission and gain direct business interest in the investee, as opposed to portfolio investments, it added.
The measure is expected to make it easier for foreign-registered companies to form strategic partnerships with their Chinese counterparts, the commission said in a report to the Executive Yuan.
In addition, a US$5 million cap on investment in China by foreign-registered company insiders would be lifted, it said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last