Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行) is planning to raise NT$20 billion (US$628 million) by issuing subordinated debts to enhance its capital adequacy, the bank said in a stock exchange filing yesterday.
The bank will issue NT$10 billion in short-term subordinated debts with a maturity of between five years and 10 years and another NT$10 billion in non-mature, non-cumulative subordinated debts, the stock exchange filing said.
The bank is slated to complete the fund-raising plan within a year after regulatory approval is granted, it said. Chang Hwa’s board yesterday decided to give out NT$1.86 billion in cash dividends this year, or NT$0.3 per share — a proposal to be finalized at its annual shareholders’ meeting on June 2. It will give bank employees nearly NT$173 million in bonuses and another NT$21.6 million in compensation to board directors, separate filings said.
Meanwhile, the state-run bank said on Thursday that it would follow central bank instructions to tighten credit for luxury-home buyers and property speculators.
The bank said it considered properties to be luxury homes if they are more than 100 pings (330m²) and worth more than NT$100 million in the greater Taipei area or more than NT$50 million outside Taipei.
The bank said it would cut its loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent to less than 70 percent, for mortgage borrowers who plan to take up luxury properties or a second property.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the