HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank by market value, said yesterday that its insurance wing had agreed to buy a 50 percent stake in a South Korean insurer, in the global banking giant's latest expansion in Asia.
HSBC Insurance (Asia-Pacific) Holdings will buy the stake in South Korea's Hana Life Insurance Co less one share from Hana Financial Group Inc for US$58.4 million, the company said in a statement.
Hana Financial Group is one of South Korea's largest financial services groups.
EXTENSION
London-based HSBC said the joint venture would allow the bank to extend its growing insurance business to South Korea, an economy whose insurance market is the second-largest in Asia.
"It ties in completely with our stated goals of expanding in Asia and aim of becoming a top 10 global insurance player, with a focus on life and pensions and increasing insurance-related earnings over time to 20 percent of total group profits," said Clive Bannister, group managing director of insurance at HSBC, in an e-mailed statement.
CUSTOMERS
Hana Life was established in 2003 to underwrite and distribute life insurance products for both personal and corporate customers.
It posted a premium income of US$228.3 million for the year ended March 31.
In recent months, HSBC has announced a joint insurance venture in China and has bought a 10 percent stake in one of Vietnam's leading insurers.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li