Gordon Chen (陳樹), the new head of the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), vowed to build Taiwan into a regional financial center, strengthen financial ties with China and continue the consolidation of domestic financial institutions as he assumed office yesterday.
Chen, who replaced Hu Sheng-cheng (胡勝正) as the nation’s top financial regulator, told reporters yesterday that the agency had drawn up more than 100 measures to lift the nation’s financial status on the world stage and would seek Cabinet approval within a week for plans that could be realized in the short term.
The proposed removal of the 40-percent cap on China-bound investment was top on the commission’s agenda, the 54-year-old said, because the government could ease the relaxation unilaterally.
“For issues that require cross-strait negotiation, the FSC will approach them in keeping with the principles of mutual trust, parity and reciprocity,” Chen said at the media briefing.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration has sought to expand cross-strait financial exchanges by allowing Taiwanese banks and securities firms to open branches in China, among other things.
Toward that end, Chen said that he and his colleagues would strive to establish a cross-strait financial supervisory and regulatory mechanism promptly, but added that there was no timetable.
With a doctorate in business administration from National Taiwan University, Chen has a string of financial credentials. He has worked as vice minister of finance, chairman of the Taiwan Academy of Banking and Finance, chairman of Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp, chairman of the Securities and Futures Institute and board member for several banks.
Although the financial services sector contributed NT$1.26 trillion (US$41.51 billion), or 10.04 percent, to the GDP last year, Chen said the industry has ample room for growth and pledged to raise its return on assets (ROA) to 1 percent during his four-year term. Otherwise, he will quit and turn down reappointment, he said.
Chen said he would promote a capital market integration law within a year to combine the trading platforms of financial products, help the financial industry reduce costs and remove boundaries between financial products.
Chen said that the undertaking was crucial to help Taiwan link up with the world and make it a hub for asset management and resource mobilization in the Asia-Pacific region.
Noting that major regional economies — including Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea — have begun to integrate their capital markets, the new FSC chief said Taiwan must speed up its efforts to avoid being left behind.
Chen also said the new government would continue to push for mergers of banking institutes to address the problem of overbanking in Taiwan. But Chen said that under his leadership, the FSC would not set a target number of companies or spell out a timetable.
“A timetable could serve as an obstacle to pursuing reform, rather than facilitate it,” Chen said, adding that he would respect free market operations.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
In a small town in Paraguay, a showdown is brewing between traditional producers of yerba mate, a bitter herbal tea popular across South America, and miners of a shinier treasure: gold. A rush for the precious metal is pitting mate growers and indigenous groups against the expanding operations of small-scale miners who, until recently, were their neighbors, not nemeses. “They [the miners] have destroyed everything... The canals, springs, swamps,” said Vidal Britez, president of the Yerba Mate Producers’ Association of the town of Paso Yobai, about 210km east of capital Asuncion. “You can see the pollution from the dead fish.
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
RSS