Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), the nation's second-largest financial holding company by assets, said it plans to boost its market position in consumer banking through mergers and acquisitions.
"We'll try to boost Mega's market share by mergers. The result will come in the foreseeable future," Mega president Lin Tzong-yeong (林宗勇) told an investor conference yesterday.
Mega has around 10 percent of the consumer-banking market, compared to its more than 20 percent market share of investment banking.
"It's a step Mega must do as consumer banking has replaced corporate banking as a major force to drive profitability for financial holdings in the past two years," said William Fong (
Mega's performance in the consumer banking sector has been quite good this year, Fong said. But the firm has set out plans to buy smaller commercial banks or asset management companies here.
Far Eastern International Bank (
"Commercial banks and asset investment companies will top our priorities. Life insurers will also be an option," said Joseph Shieh (謝劍平), Mega's executive vice president.
Credit-card lending and housing loans soared by 31.44 percent in the first nine months to a combined NT$108.87 billion, compared to NT$82.83 billion last year, according to the company.
Shieh hopes Mega will aggressively boost its market position in consumer banking to around 20 percent within three to five years.
But Mega's ambition is more than expanding its consumer banking business. The company also has the ambition to make inroads in the China market.
Lin said Mega is mulling acquiring a Hong Kong bank to get earlier access to the China market after Beijing signed the Closer Partnership Agreement with the territory in June.
"We share the same concerns as Fubon. It's just too slow to wait for approval to set up branches in China to provide financial services to Taiwanese businessmen with factories in China," Lin said.
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) signed an agreement with Arab Banking Corp in September to buy the 55 percent-stake the latter held in the Hong Kong-based International Bank of Asia (港基銀行).
Mega raised its financial forecast for this year to NT$18 billion in profit from NT$15 billion estimated previously.
The revised earnings per share rose to NT$1.85, up from NT$1.53. Mega earned NT$6.3 billion last year.
Declining to give his projection for earnings growth for next year, Lin assured investors that growth will continue.
Mega still has NT$25 billion unrealized profits, he said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last