Hey,
I’ve just been removed as the official office representative without my consent. I find that very odd…
Backstory:
I work for a company headquartered abroad. Here in TW we just have a small team of developers, which – for reasons of the previous owner – is situated here. When said owner left, I became the next official office representative. Fully registered in the company registration. Bank accounts on my name. And all that.
Anyway, somewhat reluctantly I took on this responsibility, but over the past 2 years made it my own. I also made sure that our payroll and other accounting tasks were taken care of by a CPA here in TW.
Now HQ slowly wanted to have more control over their oversea offices and have them depend less on a person (I understand).
But then today:
The legal rep of HQ just tells me I’m removed as Office Representative and our CPA will take on this role. She also shared with me the new signature guidelines which was setup by the CPA. And I can see that the CPA has made a new company chop.
Now I’m very confused at the legality of this.
How can the Office Representative just be changed without me knowing it? Can you just walk up to MOFA and say “remove that guy. Put my name on”?
And what’s up with the new company chop?
Any thoughts on this? Am I missing some vital understanding, that in fact, this role is easy replaceable? Or should I really hear some alarm bells ringing?
Sorry to hear that, but looks like HQ is giving you a huge hint that you are not part of its future management plan for local office. I’d start proactively networking.
I run a Taiwan branch office and its overseas parent company. To change the legal representative what would happen is a board of directors meeting at the parent company to nominate a new representative. A new power of attorney would be drawn up and that and the minutes from the board meeting would serve as input into other processes. These include work permit applications if needed and change of company registration.
The latter process would be handled by the accountant in Taiwan. Standard practice appears to be to make two copies of the company and fuzeren stamps, so if the CPA already had a copy it would make the change straightforward (and effectively if a copy of your fuzeren stamp was used, you “authorised” it). If not, still possible for the parent company to provide overriding decisions.
Since multiple copies of stamps are assumed, changing the stamps on transition of fuzeren would be fairly standard to stop the old ones working.
So, yup, legal to switch, but not a method that I’d personally follow
Yup, obviously there’s probably not “supposed” to be, but it does appear to be a fairly common practice (from my limited exposure). In recent years, I believe some helpful bank staff even got in trouble for keeping copies of customer stamps so they could more easily approve transactions [Ed - eg Taishin employee code of conduct makes reference to this on page 9: https://www.taishinholdings.com.tw/upload/F38061030/IR_20180608061823_file1.pdf ]
Since company stamps for small business are often low-end/digitally created, you just ask the stamp shop to make two when they get made.
After all, don’t want to have to mafan the fuzeren for trivial document sign-offs, right?
Thanks everyone for the replies! It helps getting over it.
In my case the CPA made a completely new, different looking stamp - it’s not a copy of the one I’m holding on to. And only after the process as been completed, the legal dept of HQ asked me to hand over the stamp to the CPA. I’m so puzzled by this.
Didn’t have a chance to talk to the CPA directly yet, but I’ll ask them.
I’ve since heard that there was indeed a fraud attempt in a different branch, thus HQ must’ve been on edge. I myself have never heard anything negative. So I’m a little hurt they follow thru with this process without giving me any heads-up. I don’t even know when this change is in effect!
I do have another job at the company (which initially I was hired for), so I’m not getting kicked out completely. But obviously I’m loosing a certain status-quo. And as office rep I felt responsible for all kinds of office related tasks beyond what is expected. No idea what to do about those things now. I should probably say “F you guys. Find someone else.”, because it never was in my job description to begin with and I’m not feeling charitable if the company treats employees like replaceable goods.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense because you probably haven’t been in Taiwan for very long and don’t understand much about Taiwanese/Chinese culture. As a foreigner he/we will never be completely trusted. What do you think 外國人means?
Well, that’s great! Unless you’re Chinese, you’ll never be completely accepted or trusted. This was my point and anyone who has been here as long as you have should know this.
[Ed - eg Taishin employee code of conduct makes reference to this on page 9: 
