Nomura Asia Holding NV, a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s leading financial service group Nomura Holdings Inc, yesterday secured a three-year syndicated loan of US$150 million from 13 domestic banks led by Taiwan Cooperative Bank (TCB, 合作金庫銀行).
“This was the first syndicated loan outside Japan raised by Nomura, which expects to build up a long-term partnership with Taiwanese financial institutions via the deal,” TCB chairman Liu Deng-cheng (劉燈城) told a signing ceremony in Taipei.
The banks oversubscribed the loan by 50 percent on the original request for a US$100 million loan, an indication that the domestic lenders recognized Nomura’s leading position in Japan’s financial market, TCB said in a statement.
Liu said that Nomura acted as an intermediate holding company for a majority of Nomura’s Asia ex-Japan entities, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam and Australia.
The fund will be mainly used to fund the Japanese borrower’s operations in greater China and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region as part of its efforts to explore businesses outside Japan, the statement said.
“Taiwan is one of the key countries in our Asian businesses,” Kenji Yokoyama, senior managing director, Asia ex-Japan at Nomura, told the Taipei Times on the sidelines of the ceremony, adding that Taiwan has shown a great commitment to Japan.
“Considering syndicated facilities, this is the only one we have signed outside Japan,” he said. “The fund will be used for world-class services.”
Yokoyama said he hoped that with this syndicated facility, the company’s Asian revenues, excluding Japan, would increase three times in three years. He declined to provide an estimate.
Nomura operates offices in more than 30 countries and employs more than 25,000 people worldwide. Its services include brokerage, securities underwriting, corporate advisory and asset management, the statement said.
Other banks taking part in the syndicated loan include Jih Sun International Bank (日盛國際商業銀行), Taishin International Bank (台新國際商業銀行), Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行), Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), China Development Industrial Bank (中華開發工業銀行), Bank of Panshin (板信商業銀行), Far Eastern International Bank (遠東國際商銀) and Yuanta Commercial Bank (元大商銀).
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is