Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控) yesterday said that it will continue supporting the government’s policies on urban renewal projects and expanding into Southeast Asian markets this year.
Company chairman Joseph Lyu (呂桔誠) said that progress has begun in 23 urban renewal projects worth NT$23 billion (US$747 million) in loans, adding that the company is eyeing 25 prospective projects.
“Urban renewal projects are assessed on a case-by-case basis and we have not placed priority on building luxury homes,” Lyu said.
In addition to lending, the company’s urban renewal task force will work on other arrangements, such as securitization and trusts, to fund the projects as well as create other investment opportunities, Lyu said.
He said that an urban renewal project spanning more than 3,000 ping (9,917m2) near Taipei’s Yuanshan (圓山) area and another project covering 5 hectares of undeveloped land are among the largest projects the company is interested in.
Lyu said that the lender is planning open a new banking branch in Sydney, while preparations have begun to establish a representative office in Mumbai, India.
There are also plans to establish a banking branch in the Philippines, Lyu said.
The company is also planning to set up additional representative offices in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, he said.
“Representative offices will enable improved market intelligence gathering, which will speed up the progress toward establishing banking branches, and they will also help us gather feedback regarding the needs of Taiwanese companies abroad,” Lyu said.
“We are taking a slow and steady approach in international expansion, and international banks have shown a high level of interest in collaborative efforts in the Southeast Asian markets,” he said.
Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), the company’s flagship unit, posted a pre-tax profit of NT$19.38 billion for last year, setting a record for the second consecutive year.
As of the end of last year, Bank of Taiwan had a non-performing loan ratio of 0.26 percent and bad debt coverage of 552.53 percent, company data showed.
Bank Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台銀人壽), the company’s insurance arm, said that it has been assigned favorable ratings by agencies, including Standard & Poor’s and Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評), despite shouldering the burden of whole-life insurance products that bears interest obligations of 6 percent amid narrowing interest spreads.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS