India and the greater China region will be the two most important markets for ABN-AMRO Bank in its attempt to become a truly global bank, said Paul Scholten, the outgoing Taiwan country head of ABN-AMRO Bank.
"You have to be active in these two markets if you want to become a global bank," said Scholten, who will be based in Amsterdam covering the bank's European consumer and commercial banking business.
Foreign banks in Taiwan will either have to be "niche players or become local players" -- which means competing mainly with local counterparts, Scholten said.
Citibank, which has formed a strategic alliance with Fubon Group (
Scholten, who took over the helm of the Taiwan branch of the Dutch banking giant in 1996, will also be responsible for the firm's global diamond finance business.
ABN-AMRO will be looking for "some kind of merger" in Taiwan after the passage of the Financial Holding Company Law (
"It takes at least three to four years to complete a merger," he said.
Post-merger work is vital, he said, because if the merged banks fail to integrate correctly, they may then again become a takeover target. While increasing asset size is important, local banks should focus more on profitability so that they will be better able to endure economic downturns, Scholten said.
He said Taiwan will probably have around 15 banks in the next five years, with the largest banks taking about a 20 percent market share -- the same as in Holland or Singapore. "Taiwan does not need 53 banks," he said.
The recent appeal by local business tycoons to roll over the debt of troubled firms may be justified if the cutting the credit line to these corporations will speed up their demise.
"Banks should not pull the rug if it is possible for [borrowers] to repay the loan later," he said. "But one should not indefinitely roll over those debts ... because at the end of the day someone has to pay back the interest."
In 1999, ABN-AMRO acquired the consumer banking operations of Bank of America. Last year it acquired Kuang Hua Securities Investment and Trust Co Ltd (光華投信) and formed ABN-AMRO Asset Management Co.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by