A total of 36 companies launched initial public offerings (IPOs) or issued Taiwan depository receipts (TDRs) on the local bourse last year, Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TWSE, 台灣證交所) said yesterday.
Taking into account three companies that delisted from the bourse, total listed companies hit 741 last year, with 14 firms issuing TDRs. This compares with 718 listed firms and four TDR issuers in 2008.
The number of newly listed companies last year was a six-year record high, it said.
“Last year was not only a recession but a depression,” TWSE chairman Schive Chi (薛琦) told a press conference. “So it means something that the number of companies to delist was low.”
Hit by the financial crisis, Hong Kong saw 15 firms delist last year, while 14 firms delisted each in Singapore and South Korea and 78 delisted in Japan, the chairman said.
Forty-six companies are now seeking pre-listing counseling from TWSE, with two firms — Integrated Memory Logic Ltd and Himax Technologies Inc (奇景光電) — filing formal applications.
Two-thirds of these companies are Taiwan funded and the stock exchange hopes to process their listings this year, he said.
TWSE statistics also showed that total market value of listed firms grew nearly 80 percent to NT$21.03 trillion (US$0.6 trillion) last year, with the average daily transaction amount expanding 12.7 percent to NT$118 billion.
Schive said the stock exchange had seen results by attracting a number of Taiwanese firms listed abroad to issue shares back home.
TWSE’s priority this year is to draw foreign firms to issue TDRs and to attract China’s “qualified domestic institutional investors” (QDII) to invest in the capital market, he said.
Meanwhile, Schive responded to reporters’ questions on the time frame for lifting the daily trading limit by saying “anything is possible this year.”
TWSE said last month it was mulling plans to relax the share’s daily fluctuation limit from 7 percent to 10 percent to bring it in line with standards abroad.
Schive said the proposal had not been submitted to the Financial Supervisory Commission as the company was still in the stage of garnering feedback from institutional investors and academics.
“The majority of the feedback has been positive,” he said.
Individual investors account for 70 percent of all investment activity and are experienced in handling a 10 percent fluctuation limit, he said.
This year looks set to be a busy one for Taiwan’s capital market, with more firms expected to launch IPOs or issue TDRs, said Adam Chen (陳志堅), senior vice president and head of global markets at Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC).
However, investors will shop around and consider neighboring capital markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore before making investment decisions, Chen said.
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