The Ministry of Finance yesterday said that professional credentials are what determine its top choices for chief executives of state-run financial institutions, in an attempt to rebut media reports about political intervention.
The clarification came after local Chinese-language media said that political influence was behind leadership reshuffles at First Securities Inc (第一金證券), Mega Securities Co (兆豐證券) and other companies where the ministry controls a majority stake and names senior executives, with approval from the Executive Yuan.
The ministry said that former First Securities chairman Yeh Kuang-chang (葉光章) tendered his resignation after it launched a probe into allegations of mismanagement and misconduct.
The probe would continue, it said, adding that Minister of Finance Su Jain-rong (蘇建榮) handpicked Yeh’s successor, Chen Chih-chuan (陳致全), after factoring in his professional credentials and quality of character.
Media reports have said that appointment decisions had more to do with power struggles between Premier Su Cheng-chang (蘇貞昌) and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), although Su dismissed the allegations as groundless.
Su said that he conducts a proper review of all candidates for state-run financial institutes, without knowing most of them beforehand.
Mega Securities chairwoman Chen Pei-chun (陳佩君) was approved for her position in 2018 after then-premier William Lai (賴清德) gave his go-ahead, the ministry said yesterday, panning suggestions that Su is pulling strings behind the scenes.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts