Bank of the West, a wholly owned subsidiary of BNP Paribas Group, has opened a representative office in Taiwan as the lender targets a growing number of Asian clients -- particularly Taiwanese companies -- in the US.
The Taipei office, which is he lender's second in Asia after it established a Tokyo representative office last year, was formally launched on Wednesday.
"More than 60 percent of our existing customers are from Taiwan," Yukinori Nishio, executive vice president and head of the San Francisco-based lender's Pacific Rim banking division, said in a teleconference yesterday.
Many high-tech Taiwanese companies do business internationally, Nishio said, adding that the new Taipei office would enable the bank to build stronger relationships with potential clients.
"With [the] new office in Taipei, we can advise our new customers in Taipei of what's the economic environment in the US," he said.
Nearly 30 percent of Taiwan's listed companies have subsidiaries or affiliated companies in the US, the bank said.
The bank's Taiwanese clients include EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), the nation's second-largest air carrier, CMC Magnetics Corp (中環), the world's second-largest maker of recordable CDs, and the Tzu Chi Buddhist Compassionate Relief Foundation (慈濟功德會), the nation's largest charity.
Asked whether the bank would upgrade its Taipei office into a branch, Nishio said the bank had no such plans.
A representative office is only allowed to collect market information and build customer relationships, but may not provide lending services.
"We are focusing on helping our customers in the US and we are not intended to make a loan to companies here," he said.
The bank has no plans to open more offices in Asia in the near future, he said.
"This new office ... will also cover Hong Kong and China as well," Nishio said.
The Taipei office is led by Jeff Chien (
"We have independent divisions with the bank that are targeting on Asian clients ... More than 200 people in these divisions who are either Taiwanese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese and Japanese bilinguals or multilinguals," Nishio said.
But the bank faces stiff competition from Citibank, HSBC and several Taiwanese banks with subsidiaries or branches in the US, including Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託商銀), Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行), First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) and Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行).
Moreover, some Taiwanese subsidiaries doing business in the US may see no need for financing as their parent companies have invested or provided loans to them.
"Customers' needs are varied. While we are a local American bank, our approach is very similar to private banking approach, [in] that we can serve our customers from both corporate and individual sides."
"We also provide some sophisticated products such as cash management and electronic deposit services, which are unavailable from branches of Taiwanese banks in the US," he said.
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
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)
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