Chairperson of Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), Mr. Jaw-Sheng Kong; Director-General of Securities Futures Bureau (SFB), Mr. Tang-Chieh Wu; Chairman of Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSEC), Mr. Nai-Jen Wu and Mr. Henry Fernandez, President and CEO of MSCI Barra and other honorable guests from the industry were present at the launch ceremony.
In addition to the new products launch, two new measures were introduced on the same day. One of which is the liberalization of trading for non-hedging purpose by foreign investors. Prior to March 27, foreign investors could only participate in Taiwan’s futures and options market for hedging purpose. This means that foreign investors participating in the TAIFEX market were required to hold a cash position in the underlying securities in Taiwan’s domestic market. This restriction has been abolished and TAIFEX now allows non-hedging purpose trading by foreign investors. The other measure is the introduction of omnibus account. Through omnibus accounts, a foreign FCM may conduct business on behalf of multiple clients through a single account with a TAIFEX FCM without having to disclose the identity of clients to the TAIFEX FCM.
Mr. Henry Fernandez, President and CEO of MSCI Barra gave warm opening remarks, “We are delighted to have licensed the MSCI Taiwan Index to TAIFEX, to be used as the basis for futures and options contracts that investors may use to help manage their portfolios benchmarked to the MSCI Taiwan Index. We hope this license agreement will be one of many Taiwan-based opportunities for MSCI Barra in the future.”
Mr. Der-Shan Wang, the Chairman of TAIFEX said, “This is an important milestone of TAIFEX to launch three US dollar-denominated products, which are MSCI Taiwan Index(SM) Futures, MSCI Taiwan Index(SM) Options and Gold Futures contracts. The three new products and two new measures will connect Taiwan with the global trend, bring more international investors to participate in TAIFEX, and increase the competitiveness and internationalization of the Taiwan futures market.”
