The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday called on domestic banks to pay attention to the risk management of real-estate-related loans after it warned on Thursday that several banks had overly concentrated their loan business on land financing and mortgage lending.
The commission yesterday invited heads of five local banks — Far Eastern International Bank (遠東銀行), Union Bank of Taiwan (聯邦銀行), Cosmos Bank Taiwan (萬泰銀行), Ta Chong Bank (大眾銀行) and Entie Commercial Bank (安泰銀行) — to a meeting about real-estate loan risks and relaxed cross-strait financial exchanges, a commission statement said.
The commission said in a report to the legislature’s Finance Committee on Thursday that it would tighten inspection of local banks’ mortgage loan businesses, particularly those involving lending for real estate in Sansia (三峽), Tamsui (淡水), Linkou (林口) and Sinjhuang (新莊) areas in New Taipei City.
In the report, the commission warned that 17 banks had focused too much on land financing and mortgage lending and said it would investigate mortgage loans using dummy accounts, when it conducts financial inspections of local lenders.
The commission data showed those 17 banks their mortgage, land and construction loan financing accounted for 40 percent of total loans. On average, this ratio for all local banks was 34 percent at the end of last year, up from 20 percent in 2004, the data showed.
Yesterday’s meeting was the second such meeting. On March 18, the commission met heads from six lenders on the same subjects.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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