Fubon sells bad loans
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), Taiwan's third-biggest financial services company, said its banking arm sold bad loans at a loss of NT$1 million to Fubon's asset-management unit.
TaipeiBank (台北銀行) sold NT$4.8 billion of bad loans at auction for NT$465 million, Fubon chief financial officer Victor Kung (龔天行) said in a telephone interview. Fubon earlier wrote off NT$4.3 billion of the bad loans and booked most of the losses.
"The sale won't affect Fubon Financial's capability to reach our 2004 net profit forecast," Kung said.
The company has forecast a NT$16 billion profit for 2004. It had net income of NT$12.4 billion in the first nine months.
Commission to curb execs
The Financial Supervisory Commission may work to ban the top executives of the nation's 14 financial holding companies from heading other non-financial businesses, the cable television station USTV reported yesterday, citing the commission's vice chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮).
"It's not appropriate for heads of financial institutions to distract their business focus on other non-financial businesses," Chang said.
Chang made the remark after a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday that the commission's ban will help ensure that the chief executive, chairman and president of each company focus their management efforts on the financial groups, whose businesses span banking, insurance and securities.
Among those affected will be Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠), who is chairman of both Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) and Taiwan Cellular Corp (台灣大哥大), the newspaper said.
Thirty-somethings quit jobs.
With widespread business closures and company streamlining, more and more workers aged between 30 and 39 in Taiwan have been quitting the workplace, according to a recent survey by the Director-ate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS).
The survey showed that 1.78 percent of the country's workforce in the 30 to 39 age group quit their jobs, exceeding the 1.73 percent who found work.
Except for 2001, in which Taiwan was seriously hit by an economic recession, the number of thirty-something workers finding jobs has traditionally outstripped the number losing their jobs, DGBAS officials said.
The officials pointed out that this indicates that the job turnover rate in the country's most productive population group is picking up despite the fact that Taiwan's economy recorded growth of 3.3 percent last year.
They ascribed the phenomenon to the fact that more and more Taiwan enterprises are relocating overseas, such as to China, and to their streamlining strategies.
LG wants Taiwan market
LG Electronics Inc aims to take the largest share of Taiwan's flat-panel television market, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing Pu Ju-hsin, chairman of the Taiwan unit.
The company, South Korea's largest maker of consumer electronics, will start assembling TVs with screens measuring 32 inches diagonally in Taiwan during the first quarter of next year, the report said.
Teco Electric & Machinery Co (東元電機) of Taiwan and Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co have the largest shares in Taiwan's flat-TV market.
LG Group owns stakes in LG Electronics and LG.Philips LCD Co.
NT dollar trades higher
The New Taiwan dollar traded higher against its US counterpart yesterday, rising NT$0.01 to close at NT$32.180 on the Taipei foreign-exchange market.
Turnover was US$447 million.
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