Banks incorporated in Taiwan saw profits in their offshore banking units (OBU) fall year-on-year in January, while earnings in their domestic banking units (DBU) were up for the same month, the Financial Supervisory Commission said on Saturday.
The commission said the OBUs of the 39 banks registered in the country posted NT$6.99 billion (US$221.16 million) in pretax profit in January, down from NT$NT$9.79 billion recorded over the same period of last year.
The commission said that the decline in profit partly reflected a smaller number of sales in derivative financial products in their OBUs, while relatively narrower interest spreads in China also dragged down the profit.
However, the DBUs of the 39 banks posted NT$19.29 billion in pretax profit in January, up from NT$16.08 billion recorded over the same period last year, the commission’s data show.
The financial regulator said the increase in the DBUs’ profits resulted from a change in the banks’ business strategies, but did not elaborate.
After including profits posted in the banks’ branches overseas, which reached NT$2.93 billion, their combined pretax profits totaled NT$29.2 billion in January, the commission said.
Meanwhile, as of the end of January, non-performing loans of Taiwanese banks rose NT$5.7 billion from a month earlier to NT$67.4 billion since loss-incurring touch-screen panel maker Wintek Corp (勝華科技) sought bankruptcy protection from the courts, the commission said.
About NT$5.2 billion out of the increase in the overdue loans came from Wintek, the commission said.
As of the third quarter of last year, Wintek shouldered NT$53.50 billion in total loans, it said.
As a result, the overdue loan ratio of Taiwanese banks as of the end of January rose 0.02 percentage points from a month earlier to 0.27 percent, the commission said.
As of the end of January, outstanding loans extended by Taiwanese banks fell NT$35.1 billion from a month earlier to NT$24.89 trillion, the commission said.
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