Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) yesterday said that it would continue seeking viable general and life insurer acquisitions to secure multiple earnings streams.
The company is undeterred by its decade-long dispute over management rights at state-run Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (CHB, 彰化銀行), and is still looking to diversify its businesses to include banking, securities brokerage and insurance, Taishin Financial chief financial officer and spokesperson Welch Lin (林維俊) told an investors’ conference.
Regarding a dispute with the Ministry of Finance, Lin said that the company would respect the outcome of pending court rulings, and that in the event of favorable decisions, it is prepared to initiate capital increases to hold a larger stake in the state-run lender.
Taishin Financial sees no immediate benefits from expanding its 22.5 percent stake in Chang Hwa Bank, and the company is not particularly interested in meeting the 25 percent ownership requirement to include the lender’s earnings on its financial statements, Lin said.
In 2013, the company’s bid to acquire the local subsidiary of New York Life Insurance Co was denied by the Financial Supervisory Commission.
At the time, Taishin Financial’s double leverage ratio — a measure of financial resilience and performance in meeting banking capital requirements — stood at 119.38 percent, higher than the 109 percent average among its peers, the commission said.
The figure had risen to 113.2 percent as of the end of the first half of the year, the company reported.
It is still too early for the company to carry out capital increase plans as it is still exploring acquisition targets, Lin said.
The merging of newly acquired Ta Chong Securities Co Ltd (大眾證券) into Taishin Securities Co (台新證券) would be completed by Monday, Lin added.
The bigger Taishin Securities is expected to take 1.3 percent of the domestic brokerage market, compared with 0.61 percent before the merger, he said.
In the first half, Taishin Financial reported that net income rose 1.4 percent annually to NT$6.8 billion (US$224.5 million), with earnings per share of NT$0.63.
The company attributed the gain to robust quarterly growth in net interest income, rising investment gains and trading profits, as well as reduced provision charges.
In the second half the company is predicting increased small-to-medium-sized enterprise lending growth following softer expansion in the first half, as well as home mortgages and car loans, Lin said.
It is also anticipating growth in overseas earnings and is planning to expand to Vietnam’s Long An Province, while Australian regulators have given the green light for a new bank branch in Brisbane, it added.
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