The central bank yesterday punished four foreign banks for helping grain merchants speculate in New Taiwan dollar-deliverable forwards in contravention of foreign-exchange regulations.
In a statement issued on its Web site, the central bank said it has revoked the Deutsche Bank Taipei branch’s licenses to trade NT dollar deliverable forwards and NT dollar non deliverable forwards.
The branch has also been banned from foreign-exchange derivatives transactions for two years, the statement said.
Photo: CNA
The central bank has banned the Taipei branches of ING Bank NV and Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd from trading NT dollar deliverable forwards and NT dollar non deliverable forwards for nine months, it said.
Citibank Taiwan Ltd (花旗台灣銀行) has been suspended from NT dollar deliverable forward transactions for two months, it added.
The central bank said it on Friday notified the banks about the punishments, which are to take effect today.
The penalties came after the central bank said on Jan. 21 that eight grain merchants had engaged in currency speculation totaling US$11 billion since July 2019 with the help of branches and subsidiaries of six foreign lenders.
The activities were carried out under the guise of routine currency transactions, which were not in sync with their actual business needs, but affected the stability of the nation’s foreign-exchange market, the central bank said at that time.
“The branches and subsidiaries of six foreign banks in Taiwan have violated the related regulations on NT dollar deliverable forwards, but two of them stopped the questionable practices before the central bank’s special investigation,” yesterday’s statement said.
The central bank said it settled the case with the two unidentified lenders in November last year, as they had voluntarily stopped the questionable transactions and settled the unexpired positions soon after learning about the abnormality in the merchants’ financial reports and business situation.
Amid massive capital inflows, the NT dollar appreciated 5.6 percent against the US dollar last year. So far this year, the local currency has risen 0.41 percent against the greenback, but it has repeatedly challenged a 23-year high of NT$28 during intraday trading, the central bank’s data showed.
The central bank had opened the probe last year as part of its efforts to crack down on currency speculation amid rapid appreciation of the NT dollar.
It also asked custodian banks to exercise restraint in trades through moral persuasion and in a Facebook post urged the parties to maintain stable exchange rates.
The central bank’s latest effort to curb foreign-exchange speculation was announced on Wednesday, when it said it plans to revise foreign-exchange rules and cap foreign-currency settlements at US$50 million for companies and US$500,000 for individuals per year.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS