Asia calling

Key businessmen talk about hot the Far East and the Middle East might benefit from closer ties.

What are you hoping to achieve in the UAE?

Dr Rong-I-Wu, CEO Taiwan Stock Exchange.

Everybody knows the Middle East is very interested in investing abroad, and Taiwan is one of the markets that Middle East people should invest in. We hope to introduce our companies to the region's investors, and at the same time we hope that we can educate people about he advantages of the Taiwan economy as a whole, so we can welcome Middle East investors to Taiwan.

Is this a traditional relationship?

We have always had a very good relationship with the Middle East, and particularly the UAE, which has been a long-term friend. We want to improve our business relationship and invite the Middle East to invest in Taiwan.

Our companies have shown very good performance, particularly in the high-tech sector. Over 60% of our market capital is with high-tech companies that show very good performance, a very high market share in the world, and a very high rate of profits.

This has always made our companies very attractive, because they do return very good profits on their stock. We haven't yet had any Arab companies list on our exchange, but we are hoping this will change.

And how do you hope to increase cooperation?

We have already signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Abu Dhabi Securities Market (ADSM), and we are talking about concrete plans and work out a way to pursue dual listings between Taiwan and ADSM. There will be a link-up between the two markets, and we hope that we can secure this as soon as possible.

The UAE is very rich due to the petrodollar, and in Taiwan we are looking to welcome capital from the Arab countries. At the same time, Taiwan already invests in a number of projects around the world, in construction and also in petrochemicals as well as other sectors.

The Middle East now is very eager to find markets abroad and to use the petrodollar. We can see this with the financial exchanges as well, where Middle East exchanges are very keen to work with other exchanges such as Sweden's OMX and the London Stock Exchange, and I hope that they can also work together with us and form an alliance. When we can talk in more detail with the government, we should be able to have some interesting projects and interesting ideas for cooperation.

How do you intend to compete with China's economic growth?

For us it is very simple. China is big but it is not mature enough, especially in the capital markets. For me the most important element in a mature capital market is its legal system and transparency, and the Chinese are still quite underdeveloped in that sense. They look very rich in terms of wealth and capital, and the market is huge, but our maturity means we have a unique advantage over Chinese companies when it comes to competing in the Middle East. So I'm very confident.

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