The board of the Agricultural Bank of Taiwan (
The Cabinet on Monday named Chen as bank president to fill the vacancy left by Ding Wei-hau (丁偉豪), who became chairman of a life insurer under the newly formed Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控), also as part of personnel reshuffling by the government.
"The board decided to schedule another date to discuss this personnel proposal, as some board members are concerned about procedural issues," the bank said in a statement released yesterday.
The board meeting lasted five hours and finished around 10pm last night. The 15-member board usually finishes its agenda in one hour.
"We did not expect it would take that long," company spokesman Shen Chi-nan (
Chairman Huang Lee-yue (
The Council of Agriculture owns 49 percent of the Agricultural Bank, which was established in May 2005.
Chen, 55, is a former president of the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China (
"I am familiar with the farmers' association and I believe that there are few people with this level of expertise in the nation's banking sector," Chen told reporters yesterday.
He said his priority at the Agricultural Bank would be integrating the operations of about 1,500 farmers' and fishermen's association outlets around the nation.
"One of the major problems faced by the credit departments of farmers' and fishermen's associations is their small scale. Integration will help solve this problem," Chen said. "Japan's experience in this regard sets a good example."
The outlets should work together selling the same financial products, rather than promoting different packages as they do now, Chen said.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained