Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), the nation’s biggest financial services provider, yesterday said that its banking arm plans to maintain a prudent attitude when reviewing loans to Chinese companies, following a potential problem of bad debts with a syndicated loan to Chinese urban footwear manufacturer Fujian Ultrasonic Shoes Co Ltd (福建索力鞋業).
Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行), the banking subsidiary of Cathay Financial, in August led a US$60 million syndicated loan to Ultrasonic Shoes, whose German holding company, Ultrasonic AG, has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange for years.
However, in September, the shoemaker revealed a shocking development: Chief executive officer Wu Qingyong (吳清勇) and chief operating officer Wu Minghong (吳明鴻) had gone missing and most of its cash reserves in China and Hong Kong had disappeared.
Wu Qingyong later resurfaced, blaming problems on a lost cellphone and denying taking any money. However, the firm’s financial status remains unclear.
“We will definitely be more careful when reviewing related cases in the future... We have learned a lesson from the incident,” Cathay Financial president Lee Chang-ken (李長庚) told reporters after the company’s quarterly investors’ conference.
Lee said the company reported the case to the relevant government agencies in both Hong Kong and China, with support from the other six lenders in the syndicate.
“It will be a good opportunity to observe whether the pledge made by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last month to govern the nation according to the rule of law is genuine,” he said.
If the Chinese lenders that made loans to Ultrasonic Shoe are protected, leaving Taiwanese lenders face the credit risk alone, domestic banks would be unlikely to provide loans to additional Chinese companies in the future, Lee added.
Asked about Cathay Financial’s future development, Lee said the financial services provider would continue to seek possible mergers and acquisitions to expand its asset management business.
Last week, Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽), the life insurance arm of Cathay Financial, announced plans to acquire US-based investment management services provider Conning Holdings Corp and its subsidiaries for US$240 million.
Cathay Financial saw net income total NT$44.7 billion (US$1.45 billion), or NT$3.54 per share, in the first nine months of the year, representing a 54 percent increase from the previous year and marking the highest level in its history, the company 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