Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控), the nation’s sixth-biggest financial service provider, yesterday said that it had completely shaken off losses incurred from subprime-related investments.
The company had written off another US$21 million, in the first quarter, from its remaining structured investment vehicle (SIV) holding, chief financial officer Hsu Miao-chiu (�?R) told an investor conference yesterday.
The company yesterday reported satisfactory performance, with first quarter net profits seeing a 90.6 percent year-on-year growth to NT$4.93 billion (US$161.5 million), or earnings per share of NT$0.55, on growing corporate lending and fee income.
The flagship bank — Chinatrust Commercial Bank’s (中國信託商銀) corporate lending businesses, which accounted for 55 percent of total lending, saw an 11 percent year-on-year growth last quarter, the company’s financial statement showed.
“The US’s aggressive interest rate cuts [in the first quarter] have made our US dollar-denominated loans cheaper for companies to borrow,” Hsu said.
The bank’s foreign-currency loans grew 13.2 percent in the first quarter, compared with one year earlier. After reinforcing services to quality clients, the company saw a robust 19.8 percent year-on-year growth of fee incomes from credit card business to NT$1.89 billion and a 6 percent steady growth from wealth management businesses to NT$2.5 billion last quarter.
The company also managed to maintain its loan quality to post a 1.68 percent non-performing loan ratio in March with an 84.33 percent coverage ratio, down from 110.61 percent in the first quarter last year.
Its ratio of broken accounts among debtors, who had previously entered the inter-bank debt relief program, was also lowered to 1.04 percent in the same month.
Albert Cheung (張儉生), director of Chinatrust Financial’s unsecured lending division under the consumer finance group, yesterday further expressed concerns over a possible negative impact from the implementation of the Consumer Debt Clearance Regulations (消費者債務清理條例), designed to resolve the consumer credit and cash card-debt problem, since April 11.
He said that the bank was well prepared to see its ratio of broken accounts to climb further to “between 2.2 percent and 3.6 percent” for last month — a high level in late 2006 when defaults of unsecured credit-card and cash-card loans emerged.
Cheung said that as of last month, the bank had received 1,000 applications, worth NT$200 million in lending, for pre-bankruptcy negotiations to facilitate a debt-repaying program, with each borrower averaging NT$1.5 million in debts.
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