JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive officer Jamie Dimon, who in December last year agreed to exit a minority-owned Chinese investment banking joint venture, said the US bank is seeking to find a new structure that would eventually give it full control.
“My longer-term dream is that we have, we own, 100 percent of something,” Dimon said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Stephen Engle in Beijing.
Dimon said he would be patient in negotiations with Chinese regulators, adding that the process “is complicated, so we respect that and we tell them what we’d like and hope it’ll happen.”
JPMorgan moved to sell its stake in JPMorgan First Capital Securities late last year after six years in the venture.
Its partner, First Capital Securities Co, was to buy out JPMorgan from its one-third stake for 307 million yuan (US$45.13 million at the current exchange rate), the Chinese firm said in December.
Since UBS Group AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc established Chinese joint ventures more than a decade ago, foreign banks have struggled to challenge local players.
One competitive disadvantage is that Chinese rules limit them to minority stakes, reducing their sway over key decisions.
China has made “huge progress” on market reforms, Dimon said, adding that he would like to increase his firm’s businesses in the nation which include corporate banking and stakes in a fund manager and in a commodities futures joint venture, according to the bank’s Chinese Web site.
JPMorgan said in February that it won approval to underwrite corporate bond sales in China’s interbank market.
The issue of control contributed to JPMorgan’s decision to sell its stake in the First Capital venture, whose business included equity and debt underwriting and mergers advisory.
“Joint ventures by nature have sloppy corporate governance,” Dimon said, adding that any new venture structure would have to allow JPMorgan “a certain amount of management control.”
Beijing in November last year said it is committed to letting overseas banks own bigger stakes in securities and fund-management joint ventures in the country.
The rule limiting offshore ownership to 49 percent would gradually be relaxed, the Chinese Ministry of Finance said at the time, adding that foreign investors’ participation could boost the industry’s competitiveness and global influence.
Dimon said his bank would consider setting up a business in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, without providing more specifics.
The zone is studying allowing foreign investments in financial institutions to exceed current caps, Shanghai Financial Service Office Director Zheng Yang (鄭楊) said in June last year, without giving a timetable for any changes.
As China’s leaders remain on track with financial and trade reforms, Dimon said he sees full yuan convertibility in the next five to 10 years.
“Twenty years from now, they will house 35 percent of the Fortune 3000 and we should go for that,” Dimon said. “They’ve made huge progress in reforms, financial reforms, market reforms.”
When asked if he intended to stay on US President Donald Trump’s business advisory council after Trump announced his intention to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord, Dimon said: “I am an American patriot and I want to help the president of the United States,” adding that he did not want to “overreact” to the issue.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last