TAIWAN is delaying a plan to allow mainland companies to raise funds by listing stocks or issuing yuan bonds until 2015 at the earliest, two sources said, underscoring the hurdles in bolstering cross-Straits financial ties.

    Banking ties between Taiwan and the mainland have steadily picked up since a yuan currency clearing deal was inked early this year.

    But Taiwan’s financial supervisory authority suddenly postponed a plan last week to launch “T shares,” or shares issued by companies at least 30 percent owned by mainland firms, due to the complexity involved in bilateral regulations and tax collection.

    “We’ll being taking a very cautious approach when allowing mainland companies to raise money in Taiwan,” one of the sources with direct knowledge of the matter said Friday. “Task teams from both sides have not even started to meet yet.”

    “Any such stock listings or bond issues by mainland firms [not including banks] will not materialize this year or next,” the first source said.

    Both sources said they needed to consider whether mainland regulators would let Taiwan regulators look at mainland firms’ financial reports and whether the financial reports were transparent enough to meet their standards.

    How to iron out differences will be among the topics to be discussed at a second annual meeting between Taiwan’s financial supervisory authority and the mainland’s China Securities Regulatory Commission in the second half of next year, said the first source.

    Four major mainland banks, including Bank of Communications, have issued yuan bonds in Taiwan. But mainland companies, excluding banks, have not been allowed to do so.

    (SD-Agencies)