Standard Chartered Bank Taiwan Ltd (渣打銀行) yesterday launched private banking services with the goal of doubling its assets under management within three years.
The global financial services provider said it saw substantial market potential in Taiwan because it has seen capital returning since the government cut the inheritance tax to a flat rate of 10 percent.
The company will take a leading role in “private banking in Taiwan and [hopes to double] our assets under management over the next three years,” Peter Flavel, global head of Standard Chartered Private Bank, told a media briefing.
Flavel said the number of high-net-worth Taiwanese has increased by two digits and is expected to double by 2012.
Susan Wen (溫明芬), general manager of the company’s private banking, said her department would target clients with investable assets above US$1 million.
To that end, Wen said the bank would add 100 fund managers globally with at least 10 years of experience in the next 12 months.
Its private banking services will encompass a full range of value-added advisory services including art, real estate and other investments, Wen said.
Together, high-net-worth clients in Asia, Africa and the Middle East owned US$7.4 trillion in assets last year, accounting for 33.7 percent of the group globally, Wen said. The figure should rise to US$13.5 trillion in 2013, she said.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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