The Cabinet-level Financial Supervisory Commission (SFC), chaired by Kong Jaw-sheng (龔照勝), yesterday officially kick-started its operation as an umbrella organization to centralize and oversee the nation's banking sector.
After being sworn into office, Kong yesterday vowed to prioritize the investigation into the financial scandal involving Procomp Informatics Ltd's default on a NT$2.98 billion corporate bond payment.
"Lessons should be learned from the Procomp incident to clarify its financial partners' regulatory responsibilities while adopting aggressive measures to protect stock investors," Kong said at a press conference.
To prevent similar scandals, the commission held its first weekly meeting later yesterday and decided to introduce changes to financial markets to enhance corporate governance.
The commission said it will submit legal revisions to the Accounting Law (
The committee will also charge the nation's financial institutions a 0.03 percent supervision fee, which will amount to a total of NT$470 million a year to fund its operations.
The commission, first proposed in 1999 by former premier Vincent Siew (
The lineup of the newly-appointed commission leadership include vice chairwoman Susan Chang (
At the inauguration ceremony, Kong vowed to aggressively develop the nation's bond markets and investment banking businesses while relaxing inappropriate financial restrictions to attract foreign investments in local capital markets.
"The government's regulatory role should make more of pushing forward self-discipline principles among financial institutions rather than the implementation of financial regulation," Kong said, stressing the importance of a market-oriented and risk-based regulatory system.
The entrepreneur-turned-chairman also vowed to carry out the Cabinet's financial blueprint by developing Taiwan into a regional financial hub, where direct and indirect financial capabilities will be enhanced to diversify financial products and expand the sector's transaction scale.
Following his pledge to adopt a de-regulatory move, the chairman also expressed his liberal stance on cross-strait financial exchange, saying that his nine-member committee, which has two vacancies, will soon hold discussions on the relaxation of restrictions on China-based Taiwanese businesses to list on the local stock markets.
Tseng yesterday said that the government has no plan to allow Chinese banks to open branches here due to their high ratio of financial leverage and non-performing loans as well as low capital reserves.
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
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