Bothhand secures loan
Bothhand Enterprise Inc (帛漢公司), a Tainan-based electronic components manufacturer, secured a NT$600 million (US$18.2 million) syndicated loan from nine local banks yesterday, part of which will fund its mid-term operations.
Half of the three-year loan will be used to buy back Bothhand’s convertible bonds maturing in the middle of October, said a statement released by Ta Chong Bank (大眾銀行), one of the syndicated loan’s four leading banks.
Ta Chong, however, refused to reveal the loan’s interest rates.
In a vote of confidence on the company’s management, the loan’s nine lenders over-subscribed the loan by NT$90 million, or 15 percent, but Bothhand rejected the additional funds.
Banks ratings lowered
Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評) lowered its ratings on five banks yesterday, including Cosmos Bank (萬泰銀行), Cota Commercial Bank (三信商銀), Hwatai Bank (華泰銀行), Bank of Panhsin (板信銀行) and Union Bank of Taiwan (聯邦銀行) with a negative outlook on their weakening profitability.
The negative outlook reflects Taiwan Ratings’ expectation that the five banks’ core earning capability will remain mediocre over the next wo years and a potential surge in credit costs amid the current economic downturn is likely to constrain their profitability and capitalization, the rating agency said in a statement.
Bota and Hwatai’s adequate capitalization and risk management are likely to provide a buffer to absorb a modest level of financial volatility, the statement said.
Union Bank’s incremental credit costs and legacy problem will hinder its efforts to improve its net profit to a satisfactory level, even though its earnings before loan loss provisioning was likely to remain above the industry average, Taiwan Ratings said.
Union Bank’s capitalization, however, indicated by the ratio of adjusted total equity to adjusted assets, of 2.5 percent at the end of March, will only provide a mediocre level of buffer against financial volatility, the agency said.
Taiwan Ratings may lower its ratings if the banks’ deterioration of asset quality and profitability goes beyond expectation and hurts their capitalization.
Once the five banks prove they can maintain a stable earnings profile, asset quality and capitalization, Taiwan Ratings revise the outlook back to stable, the statement said.
FDI in China fell 17.8%
Foreign direct investment in China dropped 17.8 percent year-on-year last month for the eighth straight monthly fall, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation said yesterday.
China attracted a total of US$6.38 billion of foreign investment last month, ministry spokesman Yao Jian (姚堅) told reporters in Beijing.
The decline compared with a fall of 22.5 percent in April from the same period last month, previously released statistics showed.
Foreign direct investment in the first five months was down 20.4 percent from the same period last year to US$34.05 billion, Yao said.
NT dollar stable: central bank
The New Taiwan dollar is “relatively stable,” the central bank said today, after the currency weakened 0.4 percent against its US counterpart.
“The US dollar appreciated against major currencies today,” the bank said in a faxed statement, adding that the South Korean won posted a bigger decline than the local unit.
The won fell 0.6 percent yesterday.
The NT dollar dropped 0.4 percent to close at NT$32.94 against the greenback on turnover of US$973 million.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last