State-run Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行) — the main subsidiary of Hua Nan Financial Holding Co (華南金控) — aims to increase its loan book by 4.2 percent this year, driven by corporate lending, senior bank executives said yesterday.
The target is lower than the 5 percent increase last year, as the bank-focused conglomerate is seeking to cut its dependence on interest income, while boosting wealth management and investment gains.
Hua Nan Bank, which drives more than 90 percent of the group’s profit, posted NT$12.49 billion (US$395.68 million) in net income last year, up 30.49 percent from 2013, company data showed.
The increase came even though the lender’s market share dropped to 6 percent last year, from 6.01 percent in 2013 and 6.19 percent in 2012. Interest income gained 10 percent to NT$24.94 billion last year, with fee income growing by 19 percent, according to company figures.
With market share stalling, the bank expects net interest margin to rise by 5 basis points this year, Hua Nan Bank executive vice president Derek Chang (張雲鵬) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
Toward that end, Hua Nan Bank is to strengthen its wealth management, and overseas and offshore banking businesses, as they generate much higher yields, Chang said.
Foreign currency-based lending can generate 11 percent returns while New Taiwan dollar operations might yield only 3 percent, Chang said.
Furthermore, the lender is to set up a wealth management platform with a view to growing the business by 26.9 percent this year on the top of a 33 percent increase to NT$3.31 billion last year, the company said.
The lender is expected to gain an extra NT$200 million in rental yields this year by leasing out partial floors at its new headquarters in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) and partial floors in its former headquarters in the Zhongzheng District (中正).
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
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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