President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday announced new measures that would broaden venture capital companies' sources of capital and what they can invest in.
Speaking to the Taiwan Venture Capital Association's (TVCA, 創投公會) year-end gathering yesterday evening, Chen praised the venture-capital industry for the role it has played in the nation's economic development by raising funds to inject into emerging high-tech startups.
Taiwan has 240 venture-capital firms with total capital of NT$150 billion.
To beef up the industry's competitiveness, Chen said the government was planning to allow the NT$300 billion Postal Simple Life Insurance Fund (郵政簡易人壽保險基金), Labor Pension Fund (勞退基金) and Labor Insurance Fund (勞保基金) as well as capital reserves in private financial holding companies and insurers to invest in the venture capital industry.
At present, most of the nation's venture capitalists are bound by the Development Fund's (
Chen, who is campaigning for re-election, said that the rules would be relaxed to allow venture capitalists to invest in the service sector and digital-content and biotech industries.
Venture capitalists will be further allowed to buy back shares or convertible bonds issued by their re-investment firms in the secondary markets, the president said.
But he also encouraged the nation's venture capitalists to enter new business sectors such as corporate revitalization and restructuring by allowing them to take part in re-investment companies' re-capitalization plans via mergers, acquisitions and buyouts.
Without elaborating, Chen said the government is also mulling special corporate laws to facilitate a limited partnership for higher-risk venture capital companies to attract long-term capital injection into the sector and a so-called "exit" mechanism, by which failing venture capitalists will be forced to exit the marketplace.
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