First Financial Holdings Co (第一金控) yesterday said the loan default caused by Ching Fu Shipbuilding Co (慶富造船) might affect year-end bonuses for its employees, while other state-run banks said the default would not have much of an effect on their bonuses.
Top executives at state-run financial institutions made the assessment at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee on fallout from the Ching Fu case.
First Commercial Bank (第一銀行), the banking arm of First Financial, has yet to settle losses linked to the default and is unable to set a figure for bonuses, acting chairwoman Grace Jeng (鄭美玲) said.
As the lead bank for the troubled syndicated loan of NT$20.5 billion (US$679.75 million), First Commercial Bank would incur the biggest losses, which are estimated at NT$3.5 billion, Jeng said, adding that bonus payouts have averaged 4.6 months of regular pay in the past few years.
The Ministry of Finance, the largest shareholder of state-run financial institutions, said it would appoint a new chairperson at First Financial in three months, after dismissing former chairman Joseph Tsai (蔡慶年) earlier this month.
State-owned Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行) and Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) said they would distribute year-end bonuses equivalent to 4.4 months of pay, while Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行) said it aimed for 4.6 months.
Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合庫銀行), Taiwan Business Bank (臺灣企銀), Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行) and Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行) said they have set the payout at 4.6 months, because their loan to Ching Fu was modest.
Ching Fu has a navy contract worth NT$35.8 billion to build six minesweepers, but its solvency has been called into question after the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office named it in a financial fraud investigation.
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