The nation’s structured credit market, which experienced a freeze in securitization activities last year, will continue to suffer from excess liquidity and low interest rates for the next two years, analysts at Fitch Ratings said yesterday.
“From a bank originator’s perspective, given that there is excess liquidity within the financial system, together with stagnant loan growth and low corporate impairment losses, there have been limited incentives for local banks to securitize their existing credit books,” April Chen (陳怡潔), associate director of the rating agency’s structured credit business, told a media briefing yesterday.
The market segment peaked at a volume of NT$230 billion (US$7.2 billion) in 2006 before dramatically declining to zero issuance activity last year, the agency said.
On the demand side, some local fixed-income investors, mainly insurance companies, retained their appetite for domestic corporate structured credit paper. This, however, was limited to very senior tranches with simple structures, she said.
Meanwhile, the nation’s real estate asset trusts (REATs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs) will maintain an outlook rating between “stable” and “negative”, pending their underlying properties, although their asset performance may lag behind the economic recovery, analyst Henry Hung (洪碩亨) told the same briefing.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) received about NT$147 billion (US$4.71 billion) in subsidies from the US, Japanese, German and Chinese governments over the past two years for its global expansion. Financial data compiled by the world’s largest contract chipmaker showed the company secured NT$4.77 billion in subsidies from the governments in the third quarter, bringing the total for the first three quarters of the year to about NT$71.9 billion. Along with the NT$75.16 billion in financial aid TSMC received last year, the chipmaker obtained NT$147 billion in subsidies in almost two years, the data showed. The subsidies received by its subsidiaries —
At least US$50 million for the freedom of an Emirati sheikh: That is the king’s ransom paid two weeks ago to militants linked to al-Qaeda who are pushing to topple the Malian government and impose Islamic law. Alongside a crippling fuel blockade, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) has made kidnapping wealthy foreigners for a ransom a pillar of its strategy of “economic jihad.” Its goal: Oust the junta, which has struggled to contain Mali’s decade-long insurgency since taking power following back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, by scaring away investors and paralyzing the west African country’s economy.
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