HSBC yesterday opened a new branch in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Lujhou District (蘆洲), its 46th in Taiwan, as the British lender continued to deepen its local presence as part of its goal of becoming a leading player in the Greater China region, a company executive said.
The new branch, the eighth in New Taipei City, marked the end of the firm’s five-year integration of The Chinese Bank (中華銀行) after HSBC won a government auction in December 2007 to take over the troubled lender with its 39 branches, in return for a government subsidy of NT$47.49 billion (US$1.58 billion).
“The addition of a new branch reflects HSBC’s commitment to Taiwan, which is a priority consumer banking and wealth-management market among the group’s global deployments,” the firm’s chief Asia-Pacific executive Peter Wong (王冬勝) said.
Taiwan’s effort to develop into an offshore yuan trading hub will allow HSBC to maintain its leadership position as a yuan specialist, Wong said.
He said the bank welcomed a recent cross-strait financial agreement that would allow banks in Taiwan and China easier access to expand in bilateral markets.
However, he dismissed concerns over HSBC losing its competitive edge to Taiwanese rivals in China, saying the bank has been serving the Chinese market for a long time.
Under the new agreement reached earlier this month, China promised to grant Taiwanese lenders favorable terms when they seek to expand in designated districts, but said it would need more time to define the actual terms of the deal.
HSBC Taiwan’s president and chief executive officer John Li (李鐘培) said the bank plans to offer yuan-based investment products in the second half of the year.
“Objective figures will show how HSBC [Taiwan] fares in terms of yuan deposits and operations,” Li said.
Separately, Moody’s Investors Service yesterday said it viewed the relaxed cross-strait investment rules as “credit positive” for Taiwanese banks and said it would benefit the whole industry in the long term.
The agency said the relaxing of restrictions would allow local banks to tap the Chinese market on a broader basis with improved regulatory support, leading to diversification and improved earnings.
“This is important given the very intense competition and thin interest margins apparent in Taiwan. However, these benefits will materialize only gradually as the bulk of their core businesses is still on the island,” Moody’s said in a report.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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