After reaping a 112 percent growth in profit last year, Taishin Financial Holding Co (
"Our merger partners don't necessarily have to be banks," Taishin Financial chairman Thomas Wu (吳東亮) told an investors' conference yesterday. "We're also cooking small- and medium-sized acquisitions."
The company is one of 14 financial holding companies that the government aims to halve the number to seven in two years, in a bid to compete with foreign rivals.
Speculation is rife that Taishin Financial, the nation's seventh-largest financial service provider in terms of total assets, was the deal-breaker behind last week's planned merger between International Bank of Taipei (IBT, 台北商銀) and SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (建華金控).
According to local media reports, Taishin Financial expressed interests to merge with SinoPac Financial, and offered to pay NT$25 a share through a share-swap deal, which caused both SinoPac and IBT to stop discussing the proposed merger deal at their prospective board meetings held on Thursday.
But Wu yesterday kept a very low profile regarding this issue. He also refused to comment on the possibility of merging with SinoPac Financial in any way.
On the local bourse, Taishin Financial rose 0.7 percent to close at NT$29.3, SinoPac Financial was up 1.1 percent at NT$19.0, while IBT dropped 1.3 percent to NT$23.7.
Wu, however, expressed confidence that Taishin Financial would meet its NT$13.5 billion profit goal with a projected NT$3.19 earning per share (EPS) this year after having reported better-than-expected performance to successfully achieve its profit goals in the past three years.
"Our five-year goal is to increase our market value from less than US$1 billion [since the start-up in 2002] to the goal of US$5 billion [next year]," Wu said, adding that Taishin Financial currently has a market value of around US$4 billion.
According to the company's chief financial officer Carol Lai (賴昭吟), Taishin Financial saw its net profit up 55 percent to NT$11.3 billion last year from NT$7.3 billion in 2003 while the EPS growing from NT$2.16 to NT$2.8 during the same period.
Taishin Financial -- awarded last week by AsiaMoney magazine as the best managed company in Taiwan in 2004 -- saw a 31.5 percent loan growth in 2004 with consuming loan increasing by 38.9 percent and corporate loan by 16.7 percent while reaping a year-on-year 58 percent growth in the gross fee income performance, Lai said.
In the mean time, Taishin Financial also lowered its bad-loan ratio from 1.78 percent to 1.18 percent last year, she added.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
RSS