Fubon Financial Holding Co (
Addressing concerns about the impact of the US subprime mortgage storm that has swept the Asian markets and weighed on financial stocks, the financial holding company said that its units have US$27.54 million investment linked to US subprime home loans.
"The market has overreacted to the crisis," Fubon Financial president Victor Kung (
Fubon Life Assurance Co (富邦人壽) has US$18 million linked to US subprime loans, guaranteed by an AA- rated bank, and Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行) holds NT$314.8 million (US$9.54 million) of collateralized debt obligations linked to US subprime-related products.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said last Friday that local banks' exposure to US subprime mortgage-related instruments was NT$40.4 billion, with losses reaching approximately NT$1.2 billion.
Shares of Fubon Financial declined by 2.5 percent to close at NT$27.6 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. That compared with a 3.6 percent decline in the banking index and a 3.6 percent fall in the benchmark TAIEX.
For the first half of the year, Fubon Financial's net income increased to NT$8.66 billion, or NT$1.12 per share, compared with NT$3.65 billion, or NT$0.47 per share, during the same period last year.
Return on assets rose to 0.99 percent from 0.46 percent, and return on equity climbed to 10.5 percent from 4.7 percent a year ago.
Earnings generated by Fubon Life Assurance for the first half of the year rocketed by 583.1 percent to NT$2.73 billion thanks to strong first-year premiums. It contributed 31 percent to the parent company's earnings, up from nearly 11 percent from a year ago and replaced Fubon Financial's securities unit as the biggest contributor.
Fubon Securities Co (
Its banking unit, Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank, saw net income increase 126.3 percent to NT$1.88 billion in the first half of the year, propelled by wealth management fees. With the credit abuse storm easing, its non-performing loan ratio dropped to 1.41 percent at the end of June, from 1.51 percent at the end of March.
"Fubon Financial's first-half result was slightly better than we expected, helped by a vibrant stock market," said Greg Ou (
With the banking unit expected to continue recovering from the bad-debt crisis, the group's performance in the second half of the year is expected to improve further, Ou said.
While working to secure its domestic business, Fubon Financial is also keen to expand overseas.
Fubon Financial's Hong Kong banking subsidiary will qualify for investment in Chinese banks when the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, which allows the territory's banks with US$6 billion in assets to invest in China, goes into effect next year, Kung said.
The asset threshold was lowered from US$10 billion.
Kung declined to comment on whether the company was in talks with any Chinese banks for investment, which requires approval from the FSC.
Fubon Financial has applied for a license to set up an insurance company in Vietnam and expects to obtain approval in the second half of the year, Kung said.
It is also looking for Thai insurance companies as buying targets to enter the market, he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the