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Ta Chong board appoints new bank president

After days of speculation, Ta Chong Bank (大眾銀行), the nation's fifth-biggest cash card issuer by lending balance, finalized its management shake-up yesterday, but its share price remained under pressure as the global credit crisis continued to cast its shadow over the market.

In a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Ta Chong said its board approved the appointment of Edmund Koh (許健洲), managing director and head of regional consumer banking group at DBS Group Holdings in Singapore, as its new president.

DBS is the biggest bank in Southeast Asia in terms of assets.

Koh will take over on April 28, replacing Jerry Chen (陳亮丞), who has been with the local bank for four years, Ta Chong spokesman and executive vice president James Chiou (邱正光) said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Chen, who was the head of global transaction services at Citibank Taiwan before joining Ta Chong in late 2005, will stay on as a senior adviser, Chiou said.

The board also approved yesterday the appointments of Raymond Ang (洪子羽) as head of consumer banking and Chew Mun Yew (趙明耀) as chief operating officer and head of strategy, Ta Chong said in the statement.

Both Ang and Chew, also from DBS, will start their duties at Ta Chong on April 18, it said.

The latest management reshuffle came in the wake of the share's 4.4 percent dip since Thursday following news of the bankruptcy of Carlyle Capital Corp. Shares of Ta Chong closed 0.78 percent lower at NT$8.85 yesterday.

Ta Chong reiterated that the bankrupt Carlyle Capital -- which was primarily involved in highly leveraged investments in mortgage-backed securities -- was not related to the Carlyle Group's investment in Ta Chong.

The local lender received cash injections from the Carlyle Group and another private equity fund, Corsair Capital LLC, through a private placement in November.

By injecting NT$15.5 billion into Ta Chong, The Carlyle Group became the biggest shareholder of the Taiwanese lender at an extraordinary shareholders' meeting on Oct. 31, with plans to inject another NT$6 billion in the future. The US private equity fund secured seven out of 13 seats on Ta Chong's board and had its representative, Gregory Zeluck, elected vice chairman at the time.

Carlyle planned to control 25 percent of Ta Chong, while Corsair was expected to take a 12 percent share, a Ta Chong filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Oct. 30 showed.

Macquarie Research said on Monday that a management change would be positive in the long term.

But, "admittedly, it will take time for the incoming management team to implement their strategic direction for the corporate business and especially the consumer-banking division," Macquarie said.
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