The banking sector’s asset quality remained unchanged last month, as the non-performing loan (NPL) ratio stayed at 1.63 percent, Financial Supervisory Commission data showed yesterday.
Bad loans by the nation’s 37 banks totaled NT$293.3 billion (US$8.98 billion) at the end of last month — a 0.44 percent decline month-on-month and a decrease of NT$3.1 billion from one year earlier, the commission’s data showed.
The sector granted a total of NT$18.03 trillion in loans last month, down from NT$18.1 trillion in March, while the coverage ratio — loans covered by banks’ provisions — dropped by 0.17 percentage points month-on-month to 68.52 percent, the data showed.
Twenty-seven of the 37 banks had an NPL ratio of less than 2.5 percent, while nine had NPL ratios of between 2.5 percent and 5 percent. Chinfon Commercial Bank (慶豐銀行) continued to top the list with an NPL ratio of 37.73 percent at the end of last month though all of its bad loans under the government’s custody had been sold off to private asset management firms in late March.
“The commission will take action to instruct banks with high NPLs to improve their asset quality,” the commission said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the commission’s latest statistics showed that the nation’s publicly traded financial institutions, including financial holding companies and insurance companies, suffered a 4.09 percent decline in revenues last year to NT$1.18 trillion. Pre-tax losses totaled NT$8.7 billion last year, compared with NT$172.7 billion losses in 2007, the data showed.
Among them, 13 financial holding companies showed a total of NT$723.7 billion in revenues last year, a decrease of NT$99.7 billion from one year earlier, with a pre-tax profit of NT$7.6 billion, or a 95 percent decline year-on-year.
As of the first quarter of this year, publicly traded financial institutions appeared to have returned to profit, totaling NT$407.5 billion in revenues, or 35 percent year-on-year growth, and NT$32.9 billion in pre-tax profit, 309 percent up from one year earlier, the data showed.
The 13 financial holding companies reported NT$283.8 billion in total revenues in the first quarter of this year, a 58.7 percent year-on-year growth, with a pre-tax profit of NT$26.2 billion, NT$27.5 billion up from one year earlier, the data showed.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”