The Financial Supervisory Commission was dealt a setback yesterday when the Taipei High Administrative Court reversed the commission’s order to oust Mckinney Tsai (蔡友才) from Mega International Commercial Bank’s (兆豐銀行) board of directors.
The commission would formulate a response after receiving a formal notice from the court, it said.
Tsai, who also served as chairman of the lender’s parent company, Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), became the first plaintiff to win a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the commission.
NEW YORK
The case dates back to 2016 when the New York State Department of Financial Services uncovered breaches of money laundering rules at the bank’s New York branch under Tsai’s watch, resulting in a fine of US$180 million and prompting the commission to order his dismissal.
Market observers have said that the commission is unlikely to leave the matter uncontested.
If the final ruling is also in Tsai’s favor, a five-year ban preventing him from holding any key position at a financial institution would be lifted.
MISINTERPRETED
The court found that the commission misinterpreted and misapplied Article 61 of the Banking Act (銀行法) as the basis for Tsai’s dismissal, as the article is intended to regulate banks and prevent the institution from compromising the ability of the board of directors to provide effective oversight and fulfill its fiduciary duties.
The commision instead used the act to regulate Tsai as an individual, the court said in a statement.
The court also said that Tsai was not a member of the bank’s board of directors when the commission ordered his dismissal.
Tsai said he feels vindicated by the ruling.
However, he is still facing charges of insider trading, contravention of money laundering rules and breach of trust charges in related cases filed by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)