Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), Taiwan’s second-largest financial service provider by assets, topped its peers in earnings last month with a net income of NT$4.04 billion (US$135.8 million), up 84 percent from the same period last year, due to strong sales of wealth management products, the company said.
The results equated to earnings per share (EPS) of NT$0.42, meaning that the company ranked first among its 15 listed peers, with a marked improvement seen across major subsidiaries, the company said.
Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank Co (台北富邦銀行) generated NT$1.78 billion in net profit last month, rising 53 percent from the level seen a year ago, thanks to high sales of investment products, Fubon Financial president Victor Kong (龔天行) said.
Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) saw its net income soar 6.36 times to NT$1.84 billion, mainly caused by investment gains in domestic and foreign equities, Kong said.
The increase has yet to factor in billions of provision recoveries that the life insurer may recognize to reflect real-estate property value rises under new accounting rules changes, Kong said.
The insurer intends to book the value increment on a monthly basis and is awaiting approval from the Financial Supervisory Commission, King said, adding that firms are not allowed to allocate property value gains even though they help to boost a company’s net worth.
Profits at state-run Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) rose to NT$1.6 billion, more than double the earnings from one month earlier, as core business at the banking arm Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀) showed a noticeable pickup, the group said in a statement.
The results equaled an EPS of NT$0.19, meaning that the company tied with Taishin Financial Holdings Co (台新金控) in fourth place, company data showed.
Taishin Financial reported NT$1.39 billion in net income, up 48 percent from a year earlier, the company said in a filing to the stock exchange.
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) fared well with net income totaling NT$1.16 billion last month, an increase of more than 20 percent from a year earlier and nearly double from December last year, the conglomerate said in a statement, adding that the figures represented an EPS of NT$0.15.
Hua Nan Financial Holdings Co (華南金控), another state-run financial services provider, yesterday posted NT$869 million in net profit for last month, or EPS of NT$0.1, underpinned almost single-handedly by its banking subsidiary Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行).
The lender generated NT$797 million in net income, while the brokerage and non-life insurance unit contributed NT$37 million and NT$79 million respectively, the group said in a statement.
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