The government will accelerate its financial negotiations with China to push for a memorandum of understanding (MOU) across the Taiwan Strait before exploring the possibility of allowing Chinese banks to take up stakes in domestic banks, Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Gordon Chen (陳樹) said yesterday.
Chen comment came in response to media speculation that China’s Bank of Communications Co (交通銀行) plans to spend US$100 million on a stake in Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控).
“It’s too early to say until a MOU is signed between Taiwan and China,” Chen told reporters on the sidelines of a business group gathering in Taipei where he delivered the keynote speech.
Taishin Financial chairman Thomas Wu (吳東亮) rejected the idea of his bank teaming up with Chinese banks early last month given current government regulations. He said at the time that Taishin was in talks with several foreign private equity funds about a capital injection.
Chen said his deputy, Lee Jih-chu (李紀珠), along with a commission delegation, would attend a financial seminar in Beijing next week, where details of such a MOU may be touched on.
He also shrugged off the question of whether the government would allow Chinese banks to take up shares in government-run banks, saying: “It depends on the supporting measures of an MOU.”
GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES? The economics ministry said that political factors should not affect supply chains linking global satellite firms and Taiwanese manufacturers Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing out of Taiwan, leading to some relocating portions of their supply chain, according to sources employed by and close to the equipment makers and corporate documents. A source at a company that is one of the numerous subcontractors that provide components for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet products said that SpaceX asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan because of geopolitical risks, pushing at least one to move production to Vietnam. A second source who collaborates with Taiwanese satellite component makers in the nation said that suppliers were directly
Top Taiwanese officials yesterday moved to ease concern about the potential fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, making a case that the technology restrictions promised by the former US president against China would outweigh the risks to the island. The prospect of Trump’s victory in this week’s election is a worry for Taipei given the Republican nominee in the past cast doubt over the US commitment to defend it from Beijing. But other policies championed by Trump toward China hold some appeal for Taiwan. National Development Council Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) described the proposed technology curbs as potentially having
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
TALENT FACTOR: The nation’s chip sector would be difficult to replace, but to maintain that advantage, Taiwan must retain skilled workers, an academic said A group of experts on Sunday called on Taiwan to strive to maintain its world-leading position in the semiconductor industry, with a US-China chip dispute expected to continue regardless of who becomes the next US president. Tamkang University Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies director Li Da-jung (李大中) said at a Taipei seminar on global semiconductor security that the relationship between the two superpowers would remain confrontational. There appears to be “no turning back” in US-China relations, as US presidential candidates US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump are both expected to continue Washington’s hawkish stance
RSS