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.
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
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
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us
The National Stabilization Fund (NSF, 國安基金) is to continue supporting local shares, as uncertainties in international politics and the economy could affect Taiwanese industries’ global deployment and corporate profits, as well as affect stock movement and investor confidence, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement yesterday. The NT$500 billion (US$17.1 billion) fund would remain active in the stock market as the US’ tariff measures have not yet been fully finalized, which would drive international capital flows and global supply chain restructuring, the ministry said after the a meeting of the fund’s steering committee. Along with ongoing geopolitical risks and an unfavorable
RSS