E. Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行), the banking arm of E. Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控), yesterday announced plans to buy a 70 percent stake in Phnom Penh, Cambodia-based Union Commercial Bank PLC (UCB) for US$69.33 million to facilitate its expansion into Southeast Asia.
“We decided to buy a stake in UCB, rather than set up a branch in Cambodia after discovering that USB shares similar ideas about business development with E. Sun Bank,” E. Sun Financial president Joseph Huang (黃男州) told reporters at the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Created in 1994 in the Cambodian capital, UCB has five branches focused on savings, lending and credit card businesses, Huang said.
UCB had US$330 million in assets as of December last year, the eighth-largest bank in Cambodia with a market share of 3.2 percent, Huang said.
“E. Sun Bank intends to copy its business model in Taiwan at the Cambodian lender to help boost its financial proficiency and scale of economies,” he said.
The investment came as bank-oriented E. Sun Financial seeks to expand its service network in Asia, after establishing branches in Singapore and Dongguan, China, last year.
The conglomerate also plans forays into Vietnam, Myanmar and Australia to take advantage of the region’s rapid economic growth.
The deal still needs to be approved by the regulators in Taiwan and Cambodia, Huang said.
Earlier this month, E. Sun Financial said it is looking to increase its loan book and fee income by a double-digit percentage this year, driven mainly by a thriving credit card business and better ties with small and medium-sized enterprises.
The company posted NT$7.06 billion in net profits last year, more than double the level in 2011, as its focus on the mass market paid off, a company report said.
TECH TITAN: Pandemic-era demand for semiconductors turbocharged the nation’s GDP per capita to surpass South Korea’s, but it still remains half that of Singapore Taiwan is set to surpass South Korea this year in terms of wealth for the first time in more than two decades, marking a shift in Asia’s economic ranks made possible by the ascent of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). According to the latest forecasts released on Thursday by the central bank, Taiwan’s GDP is expected to expand 4.55 percent this year, a further upward revision from the 4.45 percent estimate made by the statistics bureau last month. The growth trajectory puts Taiwan on track to exceed South Korea’s GDP per capita — a key measure of living standards — a
Samsung Electronics Co shares jumped 4.47 percent yesterday after reports it has won approval from Nvidia Corp for the use of advanced high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which marks a breakthrough for the South Korean technology leader. The stock closed at 83,500 won in Seoul, the highest since July 31 last year. Yesterday’s gain comes after local media, including the Korea Economic Daily, reported that Samsung’s 12-layer HBM3E product recently passed Nvidia’s qualification tests. That clears the components for use in the artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators essential to the training of AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek (深度求索), and finally allows Samsung
READY TO HELP: Should TSMC require assistance, the government would fully cooperate in helping to speed up the establishment of the Chiayi plant, an official said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its investment plans in Taiwan are “unchanged” amid speculation that the chipmaker might have suspended construction work on its second chip packaging plant in Chiayi County and plans to move equipment arranged for the plant to the US. The Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported earlier yesterday that TSMC had halted the construction of the chip packaging plant, which was scheduled to be completed next year and begin mass production in 2028. TSMC did not directly address whether construction of the plant had halted, but said its investment plans in Taiwan remain “unchanged.” The chipmaker started
LOOKING BRIGHT: Taiwanese tech stocks have been trading at 18 to 19 times earnings, beating the 15 percent long-term average amid AI-driven optimism, an analyst said Taiwan’s economy could expand by as much as 5 percent this year, fueled by its technology manufacturing edge amid a global artificial intelligence (AI) boom, while tariff exemptions on semiconductor products keep the country’s levy burden low despite a headline rate of 20 percent, UBS Investment Bank said yesterday. “Although Washington has imposed a 20 percent tariff on goods from Taiwan, exemptions for semiconductors keep the weighted average low,” UBS senior economist for Asia and China William Deng (鄧維慎) said. The growth momentum is expected to extend into next year, with technology companies’ revenue projected to rise 17 percent, UBS research head
RSS