Fitch Ratings yesterday said it had revised down the outlook ratings for Taishin Financial Holding Co (
It marked the first time that the British ratings firm has downgraded local financial institutions on growing concern over the spiraling defaults on credit and cash card loans, the company said.
"The revision reflects Fitch's general concerns over Taiwan's banking system caused by the banks' aggressive growth in unsecured consumer loans and the subsequent deterioration in the quality of the loans, compounded by the authorities' inept handling of the unfolding debacle," Jonathan Lee (李信佳), senior director in Fitch's financial institutions group, said in a statement released yesterday.
The annualized charge-off rates on credit-card and cash-card loans soared to 14 percent and 17 percent respectively in January from around 6 percent in recent years, Lee said.
"Charge-offs" refer to accounts receivables that are unlikely to be collected and will be written off. They are categorized as a company's expenses and reduce net income.
The initial rise in the delinquency rate was due to banks' overly aggressive growth in these high-risk portfolios and inadequacies in credit scoring systems, the statement read. The government's misguided responses to the consumer debt fiasco had further helped worsen credit quality, it said.
The bail-out program offering indebted cardholders reduced interest rates and longer payback periods, as well as proposals to lower the interest-rate ceiling and introduce a new personal bankruptcy law, have led some debtors to withhold payments in the hope of more generous debt relief in the future, the statement said.
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
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