Taiwan

The Taiwan Stock Exchange and GreTai Securities Market have so far approved a total of 9 securities firms to issue exchange traded notes in Q2 this year.

Currently, odd-lot trades are only permitted in after-hours trading. The introduction of intraday odd-lot trading will boost daily turnover and give retail investors more choice, the FSC says.

The new panel will assess formal applications for internet-only bank licences. Chunghwa Telecom, Waterland Financial and Line Financial are each seeking licences.

Pre-approval will mean that  most ordinary mergers and acquisitions, and start-ups originating from abroad will need to be reported only after the fact.

The majority of banks' clients pose low money laundering risks, and should not be subject to the same level of scrutiny as high risk clients, said FSC chairman Wellington Koo.

FSC loosens restrictions on investment in Chinese equities in response to proposed increase of China weighting in MSCI emerging markets index.

Insufficient disclosures of corporate clients' beneficiaries by financial institutions was cited as one of Taiwan's shortcomings in the APG's latest report.

The APG was reportedly impressed by Taiwan's performance during its third round of mutual evaluations, which concluded last week.

Taiwan has amended its AML/CFT laws, forbidding anonymous cryptocurrency transactions and empowering the FSC to take action against noncompliant platform operators.

The FSC has fined the bank $129,000 for internal control failures that allowed two of its officers to misappropriate client funds, and ordered it to dismiss the officers responsible.