The debt-ridden Kaohsiung Business Bank (
"Two local financial holding companies, which have shown interest in acquiring the bank, have undertaken due diligence checks into its assets and liabilities," said Johnson Chen (
At a seminar to discuss the nation's progress on financial reforms yesterday, Chen told reporters that he estimates that the failed bank may cost the government's Financial Restructuring Fund (金融重建基金) between NT$17 billion and NT$20 billion in cash to bail it out.
Citing a confidentiality agreement, Chen, however, refused to reveal the names of the two bidders, adding that there may be more potential buyers before the application deadline on Nov. 28.
According to Chen, the lender, which currently operates 44 branches nationwide, has less than NT$100 billion in its savings accounts and about NT$40 billion in other assets after writing off NT$21.7 billion of impaired assets in June.
As a regional bank, the Kaohsiung Business Bank is licensed to operate more than 60 local branches, which Chen said will be a selling point to local financial holding companies in light of their plans to expand.
No foreign investors, which are required to have past experience in running banks, indicated by a minimum 25 percent stake in a bank, have approached the corporation to apply to enter the bidding, Chen added.
In his address to the 18th World Chinese Banking Amity Conference yesterday morning, Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (
"The fund's allocation is the first step to facilitating an exit system that is empowered to shut down failing banks and to safeguard financial order and the banking sector's health," Lin told the conference yesterday.
As a guest speaker at the same conference, Premier Yu Shyi-kun blamed the opposition alliance for boycotting review of the fund's bill.
Yu accused the opposition parties of delaying the nation's progress in financial reforms while trumpeting the government's achievement in writing off a total of NT$336.7 billion in bad loans within the past year and nine months.
In response, Legislative Speaker and KMT Vice Chairman Wang Jin-pyng (
Wang said that PFP Chairman James Soong (
During the last legislative session, the opposition alliance shelved the bill for the fund, prohibiting the fund from covering failed banks' non-depository liabilities by cutting the NT$680 billion fund proposed by the finance ministry by half.
Lin, however, insisted that the fund should cover failed banks' non-depository liabilities for fear of triggering a systemic crisis in the banking sector.
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
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the