Amid the frenzy surrounding the Rebar Asia Pacific Group (
From 1997 to last November, local lenders wrote off a total of NT$375 billion (US$11.4 billion) in loan defaults by 1,471 account holders, with each account owing at least NT$100 million to the banks, lawmakers said, citing figures provided by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) in a closed-door meeting hosted by the Finance Committee of the Legislative Yuan.
The statistics also showed that the number of individuals whose loan default exceeded NT$2 billion total 220, accounting for more than NT$80 billion, or 21 percent, of total bad debts written off.
The Finance Committee called the meeting yesterday, requiring the Financial Supervisory Commission to report on banks' handling of the top 100 defaulters in the past decade.
FSC Chairman Shih Jun-ji (
The FSC report also showed that Chang Hwa Bank (彰化銀行) had the highest number of branches that had written off individual bad debts exceeding NT$2 billion. The bank wrote off a total of NT$21.12 billion in loan defaults by 54 account owners in seven branches, People First Party Legislator Christina Liu (劉憶如) said.
Mega International Commercial Bank (
On the largest amount of bad debts at a single branch, Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) placed first with more than NT$9 billion of bad loans owed by 36 accounts, followed by Taichung Commercial Bank's (台中銀行) NT$7.5 billion held by eight accounts and the Central Trust of China's (中央信託局) NT$6 billion owed by 28 accounts.
The unusually high amount of loan defaults at a single branch could be an indication of "unlawful lending to affiliates," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (
However, the names of the bad-debt owners were all encrypted in code by the commission in yesterday's meeting, which aroused the ire of the lawmakers.
"This does not help in cracking down on embezzlement," Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tang Bi-a (
The Cabinet and the legislature are seeking to amend Article 48 of the Banking Act (
Liu recommended that the semi-official Joint Credit Information Center (聯合徵信中心), which compiles individual credit records, be charged with the task of disclosing information on heavy bad debtors.
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
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured