Hua Nan Financial Holdings Co (華南金控) expects earnings to grow this year on the expectation that the eurozone debt crisis would ease, company chairman Wang Rong-jou (王榮周) said yesterday.
Last year, net income jumped 40 percent year-on-year to NT$8.45 billion (US$285 million) from a year earlier.
“We are confident in continued growth this year, but it is difficult to predict the pace, given the clouding of the global landscape,” Wong told reporters during a public function.
Improvement in the state-run conglomerate’s net profit last year was mainly due to improving interest income from the banking arm, Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行), the company report said.
The lender reported NT$19.58 billion in interest income last year, up 16 percent from NT$16.94 billion, on broadening interest spreads, the report said.
Pretax income at the bank is expected to increase to NT$11 billion this year on the back of overseas expansion, officials said, requesting not to be named.
Hua Nan Financial recently raised NT$20 billion in new capital that it intends to use to expand its presence in China, the officials said.
The banking unit is awaiting regulatory approval to establish a second branch in Shanghai and is evaluating locations for a third branch, Wang said. Hua Nan Bank also plans to enter China’s capital leasing market and is close to finalizing assessments to take a 20 percent stake in a Chinese peer, likely on the eastern coast, the chair said.
Fujian Haixia Bank (福建海峽銀行), the largest city-level lender in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, which inked a cooperation agreement with Hua Nan Bank last year on operational, business and professional exchanges, appears the most likely candidate, the officials said.
“The two sides have yet to agree on share prices and other investment terms,” one official said. “We hope that by taking this stake Hua Nan Bank will at least win influence over the Chinese lender’s decision-making, if short of the power to set its future course.”
Potential investment targets should have a price-to-book-ratio of more than two, as evidence of financial health and market value, Hua Nan Bank chairman Lin Ming-cheng (林明成) said.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS