Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) yesterday said it would continue to increase investments in domestic properties and securities on the back of a minimum capital of NT$27 billion (US$829 million), company executives said yesterday.
“There’s still room for us to take up properties since some NT$15 billion out of the total budget of NT$40 billion, previously approved by the board for real-estate investments, is yet to be spent,” chief financial officer Winston Yung (容覺生) told an investors’ teleconference.
Last month, Shin Kong Financial’s investment portfolio totaled NT$1.25 trillion, 6.9 percent of which was put into property, with the highest return of 13.8 percent among all destinations including an average capital gain of 9.8 percent after liquidation.
That didn’t include Shin Kong Financial’s acquisition of three of Asia Plaza’s (亞太經貿廣場) office buildings for NT$11.5 billion earlier this month, which are also expected to generate a 4 percent yield if fully rented, assistant vice president Sunny Hsu (徐順鋆) said.
After pumping some NT$16.8 billion into the local stock market in the third quarter, the company may further boost equity investments to account for 7 percent of its total portfolio from the current 6 percent, which will translate into a minimum capital of NT$12.5 billion by year’s end, even if the total investment fails to see annual growth of 10 percent to 15 percent, Yung said.
As of last month, the company’s equity investments generated a 4.4 percent return — the third-highest next to the yield from policy loans at 6.26 percent, according to Hsu.
Shin Kong Financial yesterday reported NT$460 million in net profit in the third quarter, more than 30 times its second-quarter profit. The after-tax loss in the first nine months was thus narrowed to NT$160 billion after the company decided to write off NT$3.52 billion in losses incurred from investments in collateralized debt and bond obligations.
Company president Victor Hsu (許澎) yesterday heralded the success of the company’s capital enhancement plan, saying that another NT$5.3 billion rights issue, priced at NT$10.6 early this month, would be completed by year’s end after the company raised NT$13.13 billion via the issuance of global depositary receipts in July.
Once injected into Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), the combined NT$18 billion will boost the life insurance subsidiary’s risk-based capital ratio to 330 percent from some 230 percent, he said.
Hsu added that, as of last month, the company’s capital adequacy ratio reached 105.8 percent, while the banking arm’s bank of international settlement ratio was steady at 11 percent.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained