General Electric Co is among a group of companies that may invest a combined NT$27.3 billion (US$831.4 million) in Cosmos Bank Taiwan (
"Based on what we have seen, the progress has been pretty positive," Chang said in a phone interview from Basel, Switzerland. "They plan to finish the recapitalization by September as originally scheduled, but we hope they will get it done sooner."
Chang declined to identify the other investors.
Taipei-based Cosmos, 10 percent owned by GE's consumer lending unit, was among Taiwanese credit card and cash card issuers hurt by a surge in loan defaults in the past two years. It posted a pretax loss of NT$2.38 billion in the four months ended April 30, according to the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC).
"The capital injection will certainly help Cosmos stay afloat," said Steven Chen (陳智誠), an analyst at Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評). "Essentially, how this will help turn around Cosmos' operations will depend on GE's strategy."
Cosmos' capital adequacy fell to 7.51 percent on March 31 from 9.36 percent three months earlier, below the banking industry's 10.1 percent average, FSC data shows.
The company in April said the planned fundraising will probably boost its capital adequacy ratio to at least 12 percent. In January last year, GE Consumer Finance said it would pay US$86 million for 10 percent of Cosmos, and may raise the holding to 24.9 percent later through the purchase of convertible bonds.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS