Stock exchange tower takes feng shui test for success

Vietnam Investment Review, September, 2003

THE skyscraper that will be the world's tallest and will house the Taiwan Stock Exchange has just been vetted by a feng shui master.

Faced with devastating earthquakes, raging typhoons and a decade-long property slump, Taiwan knew it needed more than the usual dose of luck to build the world's tallest skyscraper.

So as soon as architects finished a draft design for the 508-metre (1,667-feet) Taipei 101--which is expected to replace Malaysia's Petronas Towers as the earth's tallest building in October--developer Harace Lin sent for a feng shui master.

"We wanted to avoid making any mistakes," said Lin, president of Taipei Financial Center Corporation, a consortium of the island's leading banks and insurance companies that helped bankroll the $1.7...