E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) yesterday said it aims to expand into China, Singapore and Vietnam next year to capitalize on the region’s growing demand for corporate banking and wealth management services.
“Overseas expansion in China, Singapore and Vietnam sits on top of the company’s agenda next year,” E.Sun Financial president Joseph Huang (黃男州) said on the sidelines of a public function.
The bank-centric financial service provider plans to establish a banking branch in Dongguan, China, late this year or early next year once it receives regulatory approval form China, Huang said.
Huang said E.Sun Financial intends to provide its first Chinese branch with 700 million yuan (US$110 million) in capital, which is much higher than the 200 million yuan previously allowed to Taiwanese firms now that the Financial Supervisory Commission has increased the investment ceiling.
E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行), the group’s main source of earnings, had its plan to establish a branch in Sinapore approved by the commission on Tuesday and Huang said the bank hopes to enter the Singaporean market toward the end of the second quarter next year.
“We intend to focus on corporate banking, providing syndicated loans and wealth management services, in line with the group’s mid and long-term development plans in Asia,” Huang said.
E.Sun Bank is also looking to upgrade its representative office in Vietnam into a full branch to take advantage of the country’s fast-growing need for banking services, Huang said.
To back the overseas expansions, the medium-sized financial conglomerate last month raised NT$7.5 billion (US$250 million), which will be used to strengthen its overall capital to NT$45.75 billion, from the current NT$38.03 billion, Huang said.
The group’s capital will grow to NT$50 billion next year or in 2013 to meet tightening capital requirements as the overseas expansions unfold, Huang added.
E.Sun Financial aims to boost its core capital ratio to 9 percent toward the year end and its capital adequacy ratio at 12 percent, Huang said.
“We’re satisfied at the bank’s asset health, with the bad loan ratio standing at 0.19 percent and the coverage ratio at 312 percent as of September,” he said.
However, the lender would set aside more loan loss reserves to cooperate with regulators if they deem it necessary as global economic uncertainties increase, Huang said.
The commission has floated the idea of raising the minimum required reserves to 1 percent of total lending, from the present 0.5 percent, a move that might weaken banks’ earnings this year, and E.Sun Bank is expected to be one of the hardest hit given its credit profile.
The group reported a net profit of NT$4.29 billion during the January-to-September period, rising 9.33 percent from the same period a year ago, company data showed.
This translated to earnings per share of NT$1.05, up from NT$1.04 last year, as the group was less affected by the global market volatility than other domestic lenders.
Shares in E.Sun Financial shed 1.05 percent to NT$14.20 at the close of local trading yesterday.
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