Taiwan’s stock exchange is focusing on attracting a new crop of innovation and technology companies in an effort to build investor interest and diversify the country’s equity market, according to the head of the exchange.
(Bloomberg) — Taiwan’s stock exchange is focusing on attracting a new crop of innovation and technology companies in an effort to build investor interest and diversify the country’s equity market, according to the head of the exchange.
Trading on the Taiwan Stock Exchange TWSE is dominated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which accounts for a third of the weighting in the benchmark Taiwan Stock Exchange Weighted Index. But the creation of the Taiwan Innovation board, which groups companies in silos such as green energy, digital services, lifestyle and leisure industries, has helped investors better identify their areas of interest, Sherman Lin, chairman and chief executive officer of the TWSE, said in an interview in New York Thursday.
There’s no plan to artificially limit TSMC’s dominance in the index. Rather, the idea is that the massive chipmaker will help attract smaller, newer companies to the exchange, making the index more balanced and diversified, Lin said.
But this evolution won’t happen overnight. “Things cannot change suddenly,” Lin said.
The CEO is meeting with institutional investors and asset managers in New York and Boston this week, urging portfolio managers to look beyond TSMC to its smaller and newer peers, which have the potential to grow as big as the chipmaking giant and main supplier for Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp.
US foreign investors accounted for over 40% of foreign capital in Taiwan’s stock market, making it the exchange’s largest source of foreign investment.
TWSE is also exploring the possibility of cross listing exchange-traded funds to track Japanese and Taiwanese securities in each other’s markets, Lin said. The stock exchange operator has already launched similar products with Korea’s stock exchange.
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