State-run Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合庫銀行) has won regulatory approval from the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) to set up a branch in Houston, Texas, as it seeks to boost its presence in the US and increase its revenue from overseas operations.
The Houston branch would be the fourth in the US along with Seattle, Los Angeles and New York, and would allow the bank to provide syndicated loans and other services in southern parts of the US, Taiwan Cooperative Bank chairman Lei Chung-dar (雷仲達) said.
Overseas operations are expected to generate 40 percent of revenue this year, while US branches accounted for 24 percent in the first 11 months, up 48 percent from the same period last year, company data showed.
Houston, with an estimated population of 2.3 million, is the most populous city in Texas, which has the second-largest economy in the US after California, making it an ideal location for expansion, Lei said.
The city has a broad industrial base in the energy, manufacturing, aeronautics and transportation sectors, as well as a leading position in healthcare and oil field equipment, he said.
Houston is second, trailing only New York, in number of headquarters for Fortune 500 firms, he said.
The branch would enable Taiwan Cooperative Bank to reach out to large corporations in Houston through participation in syndicated loans, the bank said.
It is also eyeing business opportunities beyond the municipality, as Houston is a gateway to Latin America, the bank said.
The Houston branch would still need the go-ahead from state and federal authorities in the US, which might take more than a year, Taiwan Cooperative Bank said.
Another local lender, First Commercial Bank (第一銀行), still has not cleared US regulatory reviews after the FSC gave it the green light early this year.
Taiwan Cooperative Bank, the banking arm of Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding Co (合庫金控), is the nation’s largest lender by the number of branches and the progress the bank has gained in legal compliance in the past few years would help smooth its overseas deployment, Lei said.
Taiwan Cooperative Bank also has overseas operations in Hong Kong and Cambodia.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy