Unfazed by a global economic slowdown, two state-owned financial holding companies yesterday announced plans to hire more workers this year to bolster their retail banking operations.
Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) chairman Michael Chang (張兆順) said that the conglomerate plans to add 600 employees this year to support its consumer banking business.
The banking-focused company presented its plan last year and there still is ample room for improvement, Chang said.
Mega Financial has focused on hiring legal compliance professionals after being fined by US financial regulators for compliance failures at its US banking branches in 2016 and last year, he said.
The situation has stabilized, as evidenced by Mega’s improved earnings ability, Chang added.
Net income reached NT$28.2 billion (US$915.32 million) last year, a 9.5 percent increase from 2017 and the best performance in three years, with earnings of NT$2.07 per share, Mega Financial data showed.
Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行), which generated 85.87 percent of the holding company’s overall profit, aims to hire more consumer banking employees to make its retail banking business as big a contributor as corporate banking — its key profit driver, Chang said.
“This balanced approach is both important and urgent, as low interest rates and excessive competition are putting pressure on the profit margin in corporate banking,” Chang said.
Interest on foreign-currency loans has dropped significantly as the US Federal Reserve has raised its policy rates, he said.
The loan-to-deposit ratio slid to 50 percent for the group’s foreign currency operations last year, but the business could improve this year, as the Fed could ease the pace of monetary tightening amid a global slowdown, Chang said.
Mega Bank cannot expect to stay competitive by sticking to its old strategy, he said.
The lender would place more emphasis on mortgage operations and wealth management, he said, adding that it can find new clients for financial services from existing savings accounts.
State-owned Bank of Taiwan (BOT, 台灣銀行) said that it plans to hire 200 to 250 employees this year to add new blood to its payroll.
The retirement of the baby boomers started to affect the local financial industry last year and the trend could last for another four years, Bank of Taiwan chairman Joseph Lyu (呂桔誠) said.
It is important for the Bank of Taiwan to nurture new talent to meet its expansion needs in foreign markets, no matter how the US-China trade dispute evolves, he said.
The bank also needs professionals to help grow its mortgage operations by NT$200 billion this year, Lyu said.
The Bank of Taiwan reported NT$11.35 billion in pre-tax income last year.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San