SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) said yesterday its banking arm is poised to set up a subsidiary or acquire shares in a Chinese peer once Taiwan and China lift restrictions.
Michael Chang (張晉源), chief strategy officer at SinoPac Financial, said the company will make acquisition and merger moves once the government lays out the official rules regarding cross-strait banking.
“We prefer to set up a subsidiary to a branch,” Chang said. “Owning stakes in a Chinese peer is also an option. It depends on which expansion can better benefit SinoPac structurally.”
Unlike most other domestic lenders, Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行), the group’s banking subsidiary and main source of income, has to date not unveiled plans to expand into China.
Chang said Bank SinoPac has ready cash but would wait until the government gives the go-ahead. He declined to elaborate.
Financial Supervisory Commission Vice Chairwoman Lee Jih-chu (李紀珠) said earlier this week that cross-strait banking rules should be eased further so domestic lenders can better compete against foreign rivals in China.
Currently, Taiwanese banks may opt to expand in China by setting up branches or subsidiaries or by acquiring stakes in Chinese peers.
SinoPac Financial aims to strengthen its franchise, scale of economy and earnings ability in the coming five years, which is critical for the banking industry’s development after the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement in June last year.
To that end, SinoPac Financial took part in several recent acquisition bids for domestic securities and financial institutions but considered the asking prices unacceptable, Chang said.
The group has no intention of expanding into the life insurance business because “we are not familiar with the sector at all,” the SinoPac strategy officer said.
SinoPac Financial aims to improve its profitability for the rest of the year after posting NT$1.49 billion (US$51.97 million) in net income for the first quarter, increasing 52 percent on the year-earlier level, the group’s chief financial officer Ted Liao (廖達德) said.
The banking unit contributed NT$1.29 billion, or 86.4 percent, company data showed.
The net interest margin stood at 1.16 percent in the first three months, sliding from 1.19 percent in the preceding quarter, due to sharp market competition, the report said.
The margin inched up in the second quarter and is expected to trend slightly higher if the central bank continues to raise interest rates, Liao said.
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