EnTie Commercial Bank (
"We are indeed in talks with several interested international investors to form a strategic alliance," EnTie chairman Paul Chiu (邱正雄) said on the sidelines of a financial forum in Taipei.
The bank does not rule out selling a 25 percent or 30 percent stake and giving board seats to the foreign buyer, he said.
"But we do not welcome buyout deals, as we want a strategic tie-up only," said Chiu, who served as minister of finance from 1996 to 2000.
The plan
EnTie, one among a group of 16 banks established in the early 1990s following the government's financial liberalization move, wants to sell shares abroad in an effort to enhance its competitiveness.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported last month that the bank was in talks with several interested Japanese investors, including leading candidate Orix Group, Japan's largest non-bank financing company, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Japan's biggest bank.
Chiu yesterday declined to name its counterparts and said no clear timetable to close the deal had been set.
Holding firm
EnTie was hoping to form a financial holding firm, as its founder and major shareholder, Lin Yu-lin (
For the moment the plan is still pending, as the financial regulator continues its freeze on the licensing of new financial groups.
For the first 11 months of this year, EnTie incurred a net loss of NT$4 billion (US$122.3 million) with a bad loan ratio reaching 5.41 percent resulting in part from consumer credit abuse and the bank's balance transfer service.
EnTie shares closed up 1.2 percent at NT$10.10 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)