The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) plans to introduce new policies later this year to help companies list on the local stock market, Chairman Thomas Huang (黃天牧) said in an interview yesterday.
There have only been nine IPOs so far this year, lagging far behind the commission’s target of 52 for the whole year, as the COVID-19 pandemic has affected companies’ financial performance in the first half of the year and disrupted their listing plans, Huang said.
Under current rules, companies must be profitable to qualify for listing, while those with sizable net value and large revenue, or select biotech firms recommended by the government can apply to hold IPOs.
Photo: Kao Shih-ching, Taipei Times
In view of the pandemic, the commission is considering allowing the Taiwan Stock Exchange and Taipei Exchange to use companies’ earnings results in the third quarter when reviewing their IPO qualifications, Huang said.
“We are not lowering our standards. We want to help companies mitigate the effect of the pandemic and continue their fundraising plan,” Huang said, adding that the commission would announce the new measures next month.
The commission has not trimmed its target number for IPOs, although listing activity would inevitably slow due to the pandemic, he said.
It is on schedule to implement odd-lot intraday trading in October, allowing investors to buy shares in quantities of less than 1,000 during regular trading hours, he said.
More than 60 local brokerages have expressed a willingness to handle the new service, up from 10 last year, he added.
In June next year, the Taiwan Stock Exchange is to introduce a market-making system to improve liquidity for companies that are financially sound, but not popular among investors, he added.
As for the development of open banking in Taiwan, the commission would allow banks by the end of this year to cooperate with third-party service providers to share consumer data with other banks after gaining consumers’ consent, he said.
Overall, local financial firms would remain resilient and overcome challenges due to the pandemic and global rate cuts, he said.
“I think insurers should be able to adapt to changes in the business environment, although they are sensitive to market volatility,” he said.
As local banks have been supportive in providing loans to those affected by the pandemic, the commission has seldom received complaints from companies, he said.
However, banks’ profitability might weaken slightly as they provide relief loans, he added.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS