Citigroup yesterday announced a tie-up with Chinese securities firm Orient Securities Co Ltd (東方證券), giving the US bank a chance to compete with its foreign rivals in China’s booming capital markets.
SHAREHOLDING
Orient will have a 67 percent stake in the investment banking joint venture, which still requires Chinese regulatory approval, while Citigroup will hold the rest, the US firm said in a statement.
The joint venture will enable Citigroup, which has retail and corporate banking operations around China, to underwrite stocks and bonds for Chinese and foreign firms in the world’s second-largest economy.
It will also be able to offer domestic advisory services on mergers and acquisitions — currently conducted out of Citigroup’s Hong Kong office.
Orient and Citigroup will also explore further cooperation in other areas such as research and training, the statement added.
LATECOMER
Citigroup, which has stakes in Guangdong Development Bank (廣東發展銀行) and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (上海浦東發展銀行), hopes the joint venture will get the regulatory green light by the end of this year and start operating in the first half of next year.
The US giant is making a late entry into the Chinese investment banking industry. Its foreign rivals — including UBS, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank — already have securities joint ventures in China.
Citigroup has 36 branches in China and expects to have 50 by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval.
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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