The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday continued to defend its decision to mete out heavy punitive measures against CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控), which had used company funds to post bail for its employees and a shareholder.
The commission is not out to make an example out of the company, FSC Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said during a radio interview, adding that the banking industry must meet higher corporate governance standards as it handles the public’s money.
If unchecked, compliance lapses could cause significant systemic risks, Koo said.
“Simply put, the influence of financial companies’ founders cannot override internal control and compliance rules,” he said, referring to the collapse of the 10th Credit Cooperative of Taipei (北市十信) in 1985, which rocked Taiwanese society.
Most of the NT$90 million bail money was earmarked for Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒), a major shareholder and scion of the company’s founders.
The company’s rules do not allow for its resources to be used for people not on its payroll, Wellington Koo said.
As Jeffrey Koo Jr was involved in court cases related to CTBC Financial’s subsidiary, he was not eligible to use the parent company’s resources, he added.
The company was fined NT$10 million and company president Daniel Wu (吳一揆) and chief compliance officer Aaron King (金延華) were suspended for six months and three months respectively.
Whether the bail money was returned to the company is not the issue, Wellington Koo said.
In a similar vein, Wellington Koo on Monday said that the commission would continue investigations into a questionable loan made by SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控), despite announcements by the lender that the loan has been fully repaid.
Judicial authorities would continue to work on the case to uncover the full extent of wrongdoings by the companies involved, and whether the loan has been repaid does not change the fact, he said on the sidelines of a question-and-answer session at the legislature.
SinoPac Financial yesterday announced that J&R Trading Co has repaid US$28.51 million to cover the principal and interest obligations of a loan made by Grand Capital International, a subsidiary of SinoPac Leasing Corp (永豐租賃).
The debt had been repaid ahead of schedule and the company has reaped profits of about NT$1.9 billion (US$63.3 million) from its lending activities to J&R Trading since 2009, SinoPac Financial said in a statement.
The loan has been in regulators’ crosshairs, because the companies failed to uphold rules preventing conflicts of interest in dealings with interested parties, while the borrower did not provide adequate collateral.
In addition, the loan was later discovered to be a measure for former SinoPac Financial chairman Ho Shou-chuan (何壽川) to fund investments in a high-end office building in Shanghai.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS