Despite the nation's poor economic performance this year, the Taiwanese are still getting wealthier, mostly outside the county, which has made Taiwan one of the most compelling markets in Asia to foreign private banking operators, ABN AMRO Bank NV said yesterday.
The Dutch bank rolled out its private banking business in Taiwan yesterday. The new service provides tailor-made investment consultancy and high-end financial services to individuals with assets of more than US$1 million.
Taiwan has seen large outbound investment to China in recent years, and the industry migration has in part contributed to the nation's declining GDP growth, Barend Janssens, managing director of private clients in Asia Pacific at ABN AMRO, told the Taipei Times on the sidelines of a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
But such capital export does not mean shrinking personal wealth, as the Taiwanese are accumulating their assets abroad, he said.
Monthly export orders rose to to US$23.78 billion last month, the record high for the second straight month, according to figures that the Ministry of Economic Affairs released yesterday.
However, up to 41.05 percent on average, or nearly US$10 billion, of products were manufactured and shipped overseas in the meantime, also a record high ratio compared with 35 percent in the past year.
This will curtail the nation's export growth momentum and ultimately its economic growth.
The Taipei-based Chung-hua Institution for Economic Research (
UBS Investment Bank predicted last month an economic growth rate of 2.9 percent for Taiwan next year, down from the estimated 3.1 percent this year, on expected further slowdown of export growth.
Even so, Taiwan's wealth-management market is estimated to be around US$250 billion -- created by between 80,000 to 100,000 high-net-value households -- making it the fifth-largest market in the Asia-Pacific-plus-Middle-East region, after Japan, China, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, AMB AMRO said.
"We hoped to recruit 400 to 500 clients by the end of next year and double the number in 2007," Janssens said.
The bank hopes its private banking unit will be one of the top five banks in Asia in the next four to five years, he said.
ABN AMRO private banking, the ninth-biggest globally last year according to wealth consultancy Scorpio Partnership, currently manages assets worth 125 billion euros (US$1.499 billion), the bank said.
ABN AMRO's French rival BNP Paribas Private Bank launched its wealth-management business earlier this month.
The French bank is targeting people with investable assets of more than NT$15 million.
BNP Paribas is aggressively expanding in the fast growing Asian economies, and is also reportedly hoping to become one of the biggest private banking player in the region in five years.
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,
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