Despite a minor deposit loss yesterday, Sunny Bank (陽信商銀) said it faced no imminent liquidity risk, after prosecutors requested on Tuesday that the lender's chairman, his spouse and some executives suspected of embezzlement be detained.
A court ordered yesterday evening that chairman Chen Shen-hung (陳勝宏) and his wife, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsueh Ling (薛凌), be released on bail of NT$10 million (US$305 million) each.
"Rumors hurt," Sunny Bank spokesman Kenny Lu (呂沛霖) said in a telephone interview yesterday. "We saw withdrawals of between NT$2 billion to NT$3 billion yesterday alone, compared with an average of NT$1 billion per day."
Aside from the large withdrawals, operations at the bank were normal yesterday, with no liquidity risk. the bank prepared as much as NT$30 billion in cash to cover further withdrawals, Lu said.
Chen and Hsueh are suspected of embezzling NT$600 million.
Sunny Bank denied the accusations, saying that Chen and his wife did not have any outstanding debts and had paid off all their loans.
Outstanding lending to the other board directors and management totals NT$3.1 billion, with full pledges, Lu said.
In response, the Financial Supervisory Commission said it would launch a probe if necessary and impose punitive measures if irregularities were found.
"We are closely monitoring any negative effect and loss of savings," commission spokesperson Susan Chang (張秀蓮) said by telephone. "The bank is financially sound and we hope the depositors will not get jittery."
As of last month, Sunny Bank had recorded profits of NT$389 billion with a bad loan ratio of 2.67 percent and a coverage ratio of 43.4 percent.
The bank's capital adequacy ratio -- used to determine the capital sufficiency of a bank -- was 8.76 percent at the end of last year, official data showed.
The crisis was not expected to harm the lender's plan to attract a foreign investor by the end of this year, which it hopes will help improve its know-how in wealth management and overseas expansion.
"We are in talks with more than three overseas banks for the sale of a 30 percent stake," Lu said.
The bank, which operates 96 branches across the nation, is not considering a full sale at the moment, he said.
Morgan Stanley advises the lender for the share sale.
Lu said the Sunny Bank hopes to make its debut in the local stock exchange next year after it postponed an initial public offering plan by the end of this year due to weakened profitability amid the industry-wide consumer credit abuse problem.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
RSS