Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中信銀) yesterday announced year-on-year growth in corporate loans of NT$510 million (US$15.8 million) in September — a sign that the bank hasn’t tightened its lending despite the economic slump, the bank said in a press statement.
As of September, the bank granted NT$276.1 billion in loans to companies, up from NT$275.6 billion at the same time last year, its statement said.
Loans to small and medium-sized businesses accounted for 22.5 percent of the its total corporate lending, the bank said.
Citing statistics from the central bank, Chinatrust said that total corporate lending by the domestic banking sector, on the contrary, declined by NT$277 billion to NT$9 trillion in September from a year earlier.
In related news, the board of Fubon Bank (Hong Kong) (富邦香港) yesterday elected Thomas Liang (梁培華) as managing director and chief executive officer, replacing outgoing head Lee Jin-yi (李晉頤).
Liang, former president of Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank Co’s (台北富邦銀行) retail banking division in Taipei, led the bank through problems with consumer loan defaults on credit cards and cash cards.
Credit and cash card earnings have since become a major driving force behind the bank’s profits, Fubon said in a press statement yesterday.
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