Former Fubon Bank president joins EnTie

The board of EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰銀行), under the Longreach Group, appointed former Taipei Fubon Bank (台北富邦銀行) president Jesse Ding (丁予康) as its new chief executive officer yesterday.

Ding is expected to take office on Dec. 3, a company press release said yesterday.

Amid media speculation that EnTie's newly-elected chairman Mike Chiba had offered a package deal that included an annual salary of more than NT$22 million (US$680,000) to CEO candidates, the bank refused yesterday to reveal the compensation offered Ding.

"It is highly confidential," bank spokesman Tang Tsung-chi (唐存智) said yesterday during a telephone interview.

In a statement, Chiba, who is also a partner and chairman at Longreach, yesterday called Ding a "top-tier financial talent who will help EnTie incorporate international financial services to become a niche bank with world-class standards."

Before he joined Taipei Fubon Bank, as Taipei Bank (台北銀行) president Ding helped boost the cosmopolitan bank's market capitalization from NT$30.2 billion to NT$80.8 billion before it was acquired by Fubon, EnTie said.

In June, Longreach, the buyout firm founded by former UBS AG investment banker Mark Chiba, agreed to pay NT$23 billion for a 51 percent stake in Taiwan's unprofitable EnTie Bank.

In return, Longreach secured five seats on EnTie's nine-seat board last week.

Rising defaults on consumer loans have taken a toll on EnTie Bank, which controls 1.2 percent of deposits in Taiwan.

The bank lost NT$3.52 billion in the nine months ended Sept. 30, compared with a net loss of NT$3.15 billion a year earlier, Taiwan Stock Exchange statistics showed.