Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, the fourth-largest US securities firm by capital, said it bought NT$6.5 billion (US$190 million) of bad loans and properties from Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), the country's third-biggest life insurer.
This was the first sale of non-performing loans by a Taiwanese insurance company, said Bernard Lau, senior vice president of Lehman's Real Estate and Structured Finance group in Hong Kong.
He declined to say how much Lehman paid for the assets, which include commercial and residential properties across the nation.
``There is a steady pipeline of non-performing loans for sale in Taiwan, and most of these loans are secured by real estate,'' said Lau in a telephone interview. ``To a certain extent, the probability of recovery is somewhat assured.''
Banks have been under government's encouragement to write off their overdue loans or sell the problem loans to foreign asset-management companies such as Lehman or Lone Star Asia-Pacific Ltd in order to compete with foreign counterparts.
To achieve that objective, the government since June 2003 has been offering rewards to banks which can lower their non-performing loan (NPL) ratio to under 2.5 percent, Jong Huey-jen (鍾慧貞), deputy director-general of the Monetary Affairs Bureau said yesterday at a press conference.
Jong said that currently there are 10 banks whose NPL ratios are below 2.5 percent and therefore are entitled to the rewards. These rewards will include getting a green light to launch new financial services, easier approval on opening more branches and permission to open offices in China.
In addition, another 13 lenders whose NPL ratios are under 5 percent would be subject to other kinds of rewards, Jong added.
Thanks to the initiatives, Jong said banks held NT$740.5 billion of loans classified as non-performing or under surveillance at the end of June, with the NPL ratio falling to 4.9 percent. That compares with NT$886.6 billion or 6.1 percent of total loans at the end of December.
Taiwan's overdue loan ratio hit a record high of 8.09 percent in April 2002 after the nation's economy contracted by 2.18 percent in 2001 in its worst recession on record.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained