Regulator approval would be required if Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) were to sell off assets of its subsidiary ABN AMRO Bank in Taiwan to Chinese buyers, a Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) official said yesterday.
Such an approval, however, may not be possible before Taiwan inks a memorandum of understanding with China to facilitate the entry of Chinese banks in Taiwan.
Lin Tung-liang (林棟樑), deputy director of the commission’s banking bureau, refused to confirm whether the granting of such an approval would be possible anytime soon, adding that “regulatory approval is required” if Chinese investors are to invest in local banks.
Lin said the commission had yet to be informed of RBS’ liquidation plan in Taiwan, which has been reported by local media.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times yesterday reported that RBS intended to put its businesses in Asia — including those in Taiwan — up for sale. The bank plans to strengthen its presence in Hong Kong, Singapore and India while withdrawing from markets in Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, the report said.
It said the bank had priced ABN AMRO Bank in Taiwan at US$500 million, touting potential “Chinese buyers or domestic financial holding companies.”
Commission statistics showed that as of the end of last year ABN AMRO Bank in Taiwan had a net worth of NT$1.85 billion (US$53.7 million) after reporting NT$2.55 billion in before-tax losses and a 1.87 percent bad-loan ratio.
As announced last quarter, the bank has launched a strategic review of its businesses, which will be completed by the end of the next quarter, Edward Lee (李以仁), head of communications at ABN AMRO Bank, said by telephone yesterday.
The bank, which is scheduled to report its finances tomorrow, will provide an update if any decisions were made on disposals, he said.
JITTERS: Nexperia has a 20 percent market share for chips powering simpler features such as window controls, and changing supply chains could take years European carmakers are looking into ways to scratch components made with parts from China, spooked by deepening geopolitical spats playing out through chipmaker Nexperia BV and Beijing’s export controls on rare earths. To protect operations from trade ructions, several automakers are pushing major suppliers to find permanent alternatives to Chinese semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. The industry is considering broader changes to its supply chain to adapt to shifting geopolitics, Europe’s main suppliers lobby CLEPA head Matthias Zink said. “We had some indications already — questions like: ‘How can you supply me without this dependency on China?’” Zink, who also
The number of Taiwanese working in the US rose to a record high of 137,000 last year, driven largely by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) rapid overseas expansion, according to government data released yesterday. A total of 666,000 Taiwanese nationals were employed abroad last year, an increase of 45,000 from 2023 and the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed. Overseas employment had steadily increased between 2009 and 2019, peaking at 739,000, before plunging to 319,000 in 2021 amid US-China trade tensions, global supply chain shifts, reshoring by Taiwanese companies and
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) received about NT$147 billion (US$4.71 billion) in subsidies from the US, Japanese, German and Chinese governments over the past two years for its global expansion. Financial data compiled by the world’s largest contract chipmaker showed the company secured NT$4.77 billion in subsidies from the governments in the third quarter, bringing the total for the first three quarters of the year to about NT$71.9 billion. Along with the NT$75.16 billion in financial aid TSMC received last year, the chipmaker obtained NT$147 billion in subsidies in almost two years, the data showed. The subsidies received by its subsidiaries —
OUTLOOK: Pat Gelsinger said he did not expect the heavy AI infrastructure investments by the major cloud service providers to cause an AI bubble to burst soon Building a resilient energy supply chain is crucial for Taiwan to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology and grow its economy, former Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger said yesterday. Gelsinger, now a general partner at the US venture capital firm Playground Global LLC, was asked at a news conference in Taipei about his views on Taiwan’s hardware development and growing concern over an AI bubble. “Today, the greatest issue in Taiwan isn’t even in the software or in architecture. It is energy,” Gelsinger said. “You are not in the position to have a resilient energy supply chain, and that,
RSS