With a grim economic outlook ahead, banks in Asia are expected to witness lower revenues and a rise in bad loans this year, Fitch Ratings said yesterday.
Fitch’s remark came after the agency yesterday released its most updated assessment of the outlook for Asian economies and banking sectors this year.
For most of Asia, banking systems are likely to see “reduced but, for most systems, still positive levels of net profitability,” Fitch said in a statement.
But those in Taiwan and South Korea are exceptions, as banks in those two countries are likely to book losses in their balance sheets this year owing to thin profit margins and sizeable credit losses, Fitch said.
“Fitch expects these trends to give rise to the need for additional capital both to offset the effect of credit losses and to boost capital levels to the new higher norms that are becoming the standard in the wake of the credit crisis,” the statement read.
Fitch wasn’t the only ratings agency to raise doubts over the Taiwanese banking sector’s performance amid adverse market conditions worldwide.
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services yesterday placed its long-term counterparty credit ratings on both Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) and Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) on CreditWatch with “negative” implications, citing an adverse impact on the companies’ capitalization and profitability owing to the ongoing global financial turmoil.
Cathay Financial is the parent company of Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽), Taiwan’s largest life insurer. Shin Kong Financial controls Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), the nation’s second-largest life insurer.
“The CreditWatch action reflects the rising uncertainties over whether the Cathay Group and, in particular Cathay Life, can maintain above-average operating performance and good capitalization over the next one to two years amid unfavorable global financial market conditions,” Serene Hsieh (謝雅瑛), an associate director at the ratings agency’s financial service rating division, said in a statement.
As for Shin Kong Financial, the CreditWatch action also “reflects the rising uncertainties over whether the Shin Kong Group can stabilize its operating performance and restore its capitalization — particularly at Shin Kong Life, which has generally dominated the group’s financial profile,” S&P credit analyst Andy Chang (張書評) said in a separate statement.
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