The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday gave the green light for CTBC Bank Co Ltd (中國信託銀行) to form a consumer finance joint venture in China, after the bank applied for approval to invest 350 million yuan (US$55.4 million) in the venture, in which it is to hold a 35 percent stake.
“The consumer finance operation will help CTBC Bank gain access to an alternative demographic of potential clients in China, and help the company overcome difficulties in quickly expanding service locations and clientele, and apply its expertise in consumer financing there,” Banking Bureau Deputy Director-General Jean Chiu (邱淑貞) told a news conference in Taipei.
CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控), parent company of CTBC Bank, in May said that it planned to form a joint venture for consumer financing in China with three Chinese companies — Huishang Bank Corp Ltd (徽商銀行), Gome Holdings Group (國美控股集團) and Hefei Department Store Group Co Ltd (合肥百貨大樓集團) — to develop its unsecured personal loan business there.
It said at the time that the venture would have a paid-in capital of 1 billion yuan, with Huishang Bank and Gome Holdings each taking a 30 percent stake and Hefei Department Store holding the remaining 5 percent.
Chinese consumer finance companies provide lines of credit to consumers, with loans limited to less than 200,000 yuan, Chiu said.
The loans are not mortgaged or collateralized, but borrowers face annual interest rates ranging between 12 percent and 20 percent, she 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