Only seven financial firms this year ranked among the top 5 percent in the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s corporate governance evaluation, down from 11 a year earlier, as some were cut due to lax internal controls or improper operations, the exchange said on Thursday.
Out of 45 companies, only state-run Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控), CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控), First Financial Holding Co (第一金控), King’s Town Bank (京城銀行), O-Bank Co (王道商業銀行) and China Life Insurance Co (中國人壽) were among the top 5 percent, the exchange said.
CTBC Financial, O-Bank and China Life Insurance were new entries this year.
Seven firms slipped from the top 5 percent, but remained among the top 6 to 20 percent of firms, including major financial conglomerates Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), as well as mid-sized players E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) and China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控), the exchange said.
Last year, the four firms, or their units, were fined or disciplined by the Financial Supervisory Commission.
E.Sun Financial’s banking arm E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行) was fined NT$20 million (US$715,563) over a theft scandal, while China Development Financial’s unit KGI Securities Ltd (凱基證券) was fined NT$3.36 million for poor internal controls and lax management.
Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) was fined NT$5.6 million for lax internal controls and Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) was fined NT$900,000 due to illegal investment abroad, while Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行) was ordered to fix its new information system, which caused problematic transactions.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
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