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.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy