Central Deposit Insurance Corp (CDIC, 中央存保) yesterday sold off three out of four tranches of debt-ridden Chinfon Commercial Bank’s (慶豐商銀) bad loans to two asset management companies for around NT$576 million (US$17 million).
The sale of Chinfon’s assets, liabilities and its operations — the so-called “good bank” part of the firm — however failed to attract any bidders, CDIC president Howard Wang (王南華) told a media briefing yesterday.
Wang refused to speculate as to why the “good bank” sale attracted no bidders, but said “we will let the Financial Supervisory Commission [FSC] decide what to do with the ‘good bank’ sale of Chinfon Commercial Bank, for which no one placed bids.”
FSC officials didn’t reply to calls from the Taipei Times about future plans for Chinfon’s “good bank” sale. But Dow Jones Newswire reported yesterday that the commission would discuss a takeover of Chinfon with the Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), citing Chang Ming-Daw (張明道), head of the FSC’s banking bureau.
Wang said HC Second Asset Management Co (匯誠第二資產管理公司) acquired two tranches of bad loans, whose adjusted unpaid balance totaled NT$12.8 billion.
HC Second is a subsidiary of Huiyang Private Equity Fund Co (匯揚創投), whose president is former vice finance minister Yang Tze-kiang (楊子江).
Liang King Co (良京實業), a subsidiary of Promise Group in Japan, acquired one tranche of bad loans with NT$5.8 billion in adjusted unpaid balance for NT$200 million, Wang said.
Robin Ou (區灝), a director at Liang King, yesterday told the Taipei Times that the company believed it was a worthwhile purchase.
“Sales of all impaired assets are always profitable, although the return may differ in accordance with market sentiment and marketing strategies,” he said.
Wang said he was glad to see the result of yesterday’s bad loan sale, which generated a 3 percent return and higher than the average 1 percent return in past bad loan sales.
The auction to liquidate the bank’s remaining tranche of bad assets with an unpaid balance of NT$20.1 billion yesterday entered two rounds of price negotiation, but failed to generate any concrete outcome.
The FDIC and the bidders will continue price negotiations for the remaining tranche of bad loans today.
The latest FSC statistics showed that Chinfon had NT$13.95 billion in net losses as of January, with a 34.53 percent non-performing debt ratio, and NT$14.351 billion in bad loans.
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