Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券), the nation’s biggest online brokerage firm, filed a missing-persons report with police yesterday after the company lost contact with chairman Wayne Pai (白文正), a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange said.
Pai has not been in contact with either the company or his family since flying to Penghu on Wednesday night, the company’s statement said.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported that Pai was last seen at the Penghu Sea-Crossing Bridge (跨海大橋) near Siyu Township (西嶼鄉).
“Pai is a highly disciplined person, who might have suffered from fatigue and depression recently,” after being investigated following allegations that he had embezzled company money, the statement said.
Recent media speculation that he had paid for an honorary PhD from National Chiao Tung University might have been the final blow as it was a major insult to him, the company’s statement said.
No company spokesperson was available yesterday for further comment.
Financial Supervisory Commission Vice Chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮) yesterday confirmed that Polaris had also reported the incident to the regulator before filing the missing-persons report. Polaris told the commission that it had been trying to reach Pai for quite some time but all attempts had failed, Chang said.
Chang hoped that the public and media would allow Pai some time and space to sort out his problems and urged Pai to contact his company to ease investors’ worries.
“By law, the chairman of a publicly traded company should not just go missing,” she told reporters yesterday.
In mid-May Pai was questioned by prosecutors and released on bail after he denied allegations that he bought shares in the company’s asset-management unit and sold them to the company at an inflated price in 2004.
Local media had speculated that Polaris top executives, including Pai, had pocketed more than NT$500 million by selling the shares in Polaris International Securities Investment Co (寶來投信) back to the brokerage company.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
RSS