Bank of China (中國銀行), the first Chinese lender to set up a branch in Taiwan, aims to forge closer ties with Taiwanese firms with operations in China, including offers of yuan settlement services once Taipei and Beijing work out a mechanism, the lender’s president Li Lihui (李禮輝) said yesterday.
Li, who hosted the official opening of the branch in Taipei, said he met with officials at the central bank and the Financial Supervisory Commission for talks on business development plans.
“As a commercial bank, we hope the two sides can promptly set up a currency settlement mechanism,” Li told a media briefing.
WARNING: EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH
Photo: Liao Chen-hui, Taipei Times
Bank of China is the world’s top provider of yuan settlement services, which amounted to 803 billion yuan (US$126 billion) for the first five months of the year, Li said.
“We are the main [yuan] settlement bank in Hong Kong, Macau and Malaysia and we hope to extend the services to Taipei once regulatory barriers are removed,” he said.
With cross-strait trade valued at US$160 billion last year and Taiwan’s trade surplus totaling US$89.8 billion, yuan settlement would save Taiwanese firms with cross-strait operations significant foreign-exchange costs and allow them to better control foreign-exchange risks, Li said.
Currently, only designated banking units can conduct yuan exchanges, but they cannot take yuan deposits or provide yuan loans. Further, domestic lenders may provide yuan-related business for corporate clients through their offshore banking units.
The designated banking units have to go through either Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) or Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行) for currency settlements with Bank of China in Hong Kong.
Li said Bank of China plans to provide over 200 billion yuan to help Taiwanese firms expand in China in the next three years.
Potential borrowers are Taiwanese firms that can advance China’s development plans and meet lending criteria, he said.
Li said the Taipei branch would keep close contact with the headquarters of Taiwanese firms with operations in China so the lender can better mobilize its global resources to strengthen services.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
Germany is to establish its first-ever national pavilion at Semicon Taiwan, which starts tomorrow in Taipei, as the country looks to raise its profile and deepen semiconductor ties with Taiwan as global chip demand accelerates. Martin Mayer, a semiconductor investment expert at Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), Germany’s international economic promotion agency, said before leaving for Taiwan that the nation is a crucial partner in developing Germany’s semiconductor ecosystem. Germany’s debut at the international semiconductor exhibition in Taipei aims to “show presence” and signal its commitment to semiconductors, while building trust with Taiwanese companies, government and industry associations, he said. “The best outcome
RSS