Ministry of Finance officials and other industry officials yesterday urged local banks to be more creative and stop copying their rivals' financial services and marketing techniques.
"`Innovate or die' is key for the nation's banking sector to remain competitive," Thomas Huang (黃天牧), secretary-general of the ministry's Bureau of Monetary Affairs, said yesterday during a financial reform meeting held at National Taiwan University.
Diversification
The chairman of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (
"Diversification is the best way to deal with the problem of an oversupply of banks," Chen said.
There are 52 major commercial banks with over 3,500 branches nationwide.
Most choose to copy their rivals' successful marketing plans for popular products such as cards.
For example, Cosmos Bank's (
NPL ratio still a problem
Meanwhile, another participant in the National Taiwan Univer-sity meeting, Citibank country manager Eric Chen (陳聖德), praised local banks' efforts last year to clean up their bad loans.
"The efforts paid off since shares of some banks rose," he said, adding "stock investors didn't dump shares because of the losses created by the writing-off of bad loans."
According to the Bureau of Monetary Affairs, local banks wrote off a record NT$413.9 billion in bad loans as of the end of last December.
The write-offs generated over NT$100 billion in losses.
The nation's non-performing loan ratio (NPL) dropped to 8.86 percent last December from 11.74 percent last March.
Despite the decline in the NPL ratio last year, PFP Legislator Christine Liu (
Political interference
Liu said that in 1998 the then KMT government began adopting measures that violated the free-market mechanism, allowing the non-performing loan problem to fester and the banking sector to withhold information from the public.
She also said that erroneous financial policies by the DPP government have lead to the reforms being put on the back burner.
In response to Liu's criticisms, Huang said that the government's financial reform plan has neither slowed down nor ceased.
Huang said the government is undertaking a comprehensive financial reform plan that involves the banking sector, insurers and securities houses.
"It's a race without a finishing line," Huang said.
Huang said the government is expected to adopt a stricter NPL definition in April that will meet international accounting standards.
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
RSS