British Economic Secretary to the Treasury Andrea Leadsom, who was planning to visit Taipei and Hong Kong next week to promote offshore yuan markets, canceled the trips on Thursday, citing emergency matters at home, the Bankers Association of the ROC (銀行公會) said yesterday.
The association is sponsoring a forum on Taiwan-UK offshore yuan business opportunities in Taipei on Tuesday, at which Leadsom had agreed to give a keynote speech and meet with Taiwanese officials of the central bank, the Ministry of Finance and the Financial Supervisory Commission.
“We received a notice from the British Trade and Cultural Office in Taipei that the member of [the UK] parliament could not make the trip after all,” an official at the bankers’ association said by telephone.
The cultural office attributed the last-minute change to constituent concerns in the UK, but did not elaborate. The country is due to elect new parliamentary members in the first half of next year.
Leadsom, who is the Conservative Member of Parliament for South Northamptonshire, England, is responsible for boosting the UK’s offshore finance businesses. The 51-year-old would have been the first high-ranking UK official to visit Taipei since then-British minister of state for trade and investment Stephen Green in 2011.
Bankers’ association chairwoman Lee Chi-chu (李紀珠), who is also head of state-owned Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控), flew to London two weeks ago to help confirm the visit, the association said.
The cultural office issued a statement yesterday, saying Leadsom had to postpone her trip due to emergent matters in her constituency.
The trade office offers apology for any inconvenience caused by the schedule change, the statement said.
The yuan forum will go ahead as scheduled, despite Leadsom’s absence, the association said.
“The ongoing student protests in Hong Kong makes the visit somewhat politically sensitive and awkward,” an association official said on condition of anonymity.
Lee is to push for Taiwan-UK cooperation in offshore yuan business and other matters, the association said.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS