Citigroup Inc, the world's largest financial services company, aims to target the nation's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) next year in hopes of driving up its annual performance by at least 10 percent year-on-year, Morris Li (利明献), country officer of Citigroup Taiwan, said yesterday.
"Many of the large-scale companies are already our customers. One of our main focuses next year will be to secure SMEs, whose annual sales reach between NT$2 billion [US$60 million] and NT$8 billion, to boost our corporate banking business," he said.
Battered by the badly performing equity market, Citigroup Taiwan estimates that this year's bottom line will achieve only minor growth from last year, and may decline, he said. It earned pre-tax profits of NT$9.67 billion last year.
Li, 50, was appointed as Citigroup Taiwan country officer in early September. Before the promotion, he served as the com-pany's country treasurer, head of sales and trading for Taiwan, and head of corporate sales and structuring for greater China.
Li replaces and will report to Chan Tze-ching (
In the first formal press briefing held after the financial regulator issued approval on the personnel change, Li said his main task is to sustain the company's growth in the face of several market uncertainties.
Implementation of the new accounting rules -- the Statements of Financial Accounting Standard No. 34 -- and the new risk assessment system, Basel II, next year are bound to send shock waves throughout the banking sector, which also faces pressure to integrate as the government has been working to consolidate the industry.
But thanks to the company's complete product line in both corporate and consumer banking, Li said Citibank looks to form strategic alliances with the nation's financial institutions by providing global banking know-how and cross-border advice to assist its local partners.
"For Citibank, the [govern-ment's] financial reform will create opportunities of competition as well as cooperation," he said.
Paul Leech, chief executive of HSBC Taiwan, who said in March that London-based HSBC Holdings Plc had no plans to buy any Taiwanese financial institutions, said yesterday that the bank did not rule out the possibility of acquisitions.
"HSBC doesn't need to buy a local bank now, but we keep our options open," he said at a press briefing.
HSBC hired 450 people in Taiwan this year and will add more staff next year as it expands its consumer and corporate banking, Leech said.
"Taiwan is still worth more in investments and we'd love to be a lot bigger in Taiwan," he said.
The bank now has 2,500 staff on the island, but less than 450 will be hired next year, he said.
One of HSBC's focuses next year will be commercial banking in the greater China market of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, said Margaret Leung (梁高美懿), general manager, global co-head of commercial banking, in the same briefing.
"Greater China is the area of higher growth," Leung said. "We expect no slower profit growth next year than each market's GDP growth."
In the case of China, she said, that would amount to about 9 percent, and in the case of Taiwan, about 4 percent.
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],”
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
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