Banking on the nation's growing wealth, Citigroup yesterday officially rolled out its private banking service, hoping to help local multi-millionaires manage their increasingly deeper pockets.
"Taiwan's economy is still well positioned at the stage of wealth creation," Samuel Suen (
"Taiwan is one of the largest wealth management markets in Asia, and its high net-worth population is expanding in tandem, demanding a more sophisticated range of financial instruments to help meet their wealth management needs," Suen said.
Citigroup Private Bank, one of the leading players in the wealth management sector worldwide, is targeting local premium clients who have at least US$10 million in assets.
ABN AMRO in October launched its private banking business in Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung, zeroing in on clients with liquid assets of more than US$1 million. BNP Paribas Private Bank also unveiled its wealth management business here during the same month to serve customers with liquid assets of around US$500,000.
Taiwan's wealth-management market is estimated to be worth around US$250 billion -- created by between 80,000 and 100,000 high net-value households. It is the fifth-largest market in the Asia-Pacific plus Middle-Eastern region, after Japan, China, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, ABN AMRO said.
Foreign banks such as Citigroup, ABN AMRO and BNP Paribas were attracted by the region's central banks' further liberalization of foreign exchange policies, increased diversity of financial products, as well as Taiwanese clients' rising needs for sophisticated onshore portfolio management, said Victor Chao (趙志平), Citigroup Private Bank's chief officer for Taiwan.
Citigroup Private Bank currently accounts for 2 percent of the segmented wealth-management market with yields worth NT$540 billion worldwide, in which the top 10 players claim only 15 percent of the market, Citigroup said, implying ample room for growth.
The US-based lender said the number of Taiwanese high net-worth investors who possess liquid assets of over US$300,000 is expected to grow to 328,000 by the end of 2008 from 194,200 at the end of 2003, citing Datamonitor's Asian-Pacific wealth management markets' survey released last year.
Meanwhile, the value of these rich people's assets would nearly double to
US$301 billion from US$164 billion, which translates into a compound annual
growth rate of 12.9 percent, the second highest in the region after China
only, according to the survey.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by