Fuhwa Financial Holding Co (
"The small scale of our banking arm is an obstacle to our development," Fuhwa Financial chairman Yen Ching-chang (
The company will seek mergers or acquisitions with local lenders in order to increase the number of Fuhwa Bank (
Yen, the nation's former ambassador to the WTO, continued his chairmanship at the nation's 11th biggest financial group after winning a board election yesterday.
Yuanta Core Pacific Securities grabbed six seats, or two-thirds of the financial holding firm's board, at an ad hoc shareholders meeting last Friday, paving the way for the completion of the merger deal.
Fuhwa Financial is expected to obtain NT$17.4 billion (US$529 million) to NT$23.4 billion from the capital restructuring after the merger is completed in the first quarter of next year, Yen said.
The company will use NT$12 billion to improve the asset quality of its banking unit, boosting its capital adequacy ratio to 10 percent and its coverage ratio to 50 percent, he said.
The rest of the funds will be used for acquisition, he said.
To enhance its regional presence, the bank will open more outlets in overseas markets like Hong Kong, Yen said.
Yen did not rule out possibility of investing in or acquiring foreign rivals in targeted overseas markets in order to expand.
Fuhwa Financial is planning to hold another provisional shareholders meeting by the year's end to approve a revised share swap ratio for its merger with Yuanta Core Pacific and to amend the company bylaws to add three independent seats on the board, which financial regulations require as of next year.
Previously, Yuanta Core Pacific had proposed swapping one of its shares for 1.5 to 1.7 Fuhwa Financial shares.
The company is also mulling renaming itself after the merger, and "the name change could represent a new phase unfolding in the future," Yen 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