CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) yesterday said it was still interested in gaining a foothold in Malaysia despite an earlier setback, calling it the missing piece of its Southeast Asian expansion.
“We would reactivate assessment plans when opportunity presents itself,” financial management department head Chiu Ya-ling (邱雅玲) told a media briefing in Taipei.
The market might turn friendly following the opposition win in Malaysia’s general elections on Wednesday, she said.
“While the political transition might take some time to settle, we will pay close attention to any policy change,” she said.
The conglomerate in April 2016 announced that it had clinched a US$189 million deal to fully acquire Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC’s (RBS) Malaysian unit, but the deal fell through that August after Malaysian authorities withheld approval, reportedly because they thought the offer was too modest.
However, analysts have said that foreign banks are not welcome in Malaysia and a turnabout in attitude is unlikely.
The group’s main subsidiary, CTBC Bank (中信銀行), plans to add a branch in Shanghai and a sub-branch in Shenzhen later this year as well as opening a new branch in Los Angeles, California.
Chiu expects the profit growth momentum seen last quarter to extend into this quarter, aided by a stable economy at home and abroad, as the macro-environment is favorable for a growth in interest, fee and investment incomes.
Interest income rose 7.2 percent last quarter from a year earlier, but net interest margin fell one basis point to 1.48 percent due to portfolio adjustments, she said.
Fee income picked up 1.5 percent year-on-year on the back of better wealth management, corporate, consumer and overseas banking operations, while its credit card and lottery divisions weakened modestly, company data showed.
CTBC Financial earned NT$3.36 billion (US$112.48 million) in net income last month, lifting cumulative net profits to NT$15.59 billion for the first four months of the year, or earnings per share of NT$0.8.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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