As planned, the Ministry of Finance yesterday won an absolute majority of 12 seats on the 15-member board of the state-controlled First Financial Holding Co (第一金控), the nation's fifth-largest financial group by assets.
The 12 government-appointed board directors include 10 seats that represent the ministry and two seats that represent the fully state-owned Bank of Taiwan (
The remaining three seats went to private shareholder representatives, two of whom are supporters of the government camp.
Vice Minister of Finance Gordon Chen (
Chen will represent the ministry in sitting on First Financial's board during the transitional stage before the chairman is elected within 15 days of the shareholders meeting, said a ministry official on Tuesday night who would not be named.
But on whether Chen would become a dark horse to lead the financial company, the official said: "We can't see it now, but nothing is impossible."
The most likely candidates for the drawn-out vacant chairmanship include Tsai Jer-shyong (蔡哲雄), the chairman of Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), and Hsu Teh-nan (許德南), president of Hua Nan Financial Holding Co (華南金控).
Meanwhile, First Financial's banking unit First Commercial Bank (
First Commercial will sell about 207 million shares in Taiwan Business, representing a 4.8 percent stake in the smaller rival, First Commercial said in a statement to the stock exchange on Tuesday.
Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
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