Dressed in an expensive, dark blue suit with matching blue-silver striped tie, banking magnate Jeffrey Koo (辜濂松) tried his best to look poised at the Third Wednesday Club's monthly lunch after rushing back from Japan yesterday morning.
However, 73-year old Koo -- who chairs Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (
After all, Koo and his family business are in a shaky situation, potentially facing their biggest crisis since he founded the Chinatrust Group some 40 years ago.
Prosecutors raided the company yesterday after detaining Chinatrust Financial's former chief financial officer Perry Chang (
His eldest son, Jeffrey Koo Jr (
Admitting that he was shocked and worried, Koo said he believed they had performed genuine transactions and the justice system would prove their innocence.
"My return shows my confidence in the bank and our intention to fully cooperate with the investigation," he said.
Koo returned to Taiwan, hoping to stabilize the situation and boost staff morale.
"Unity and faith have been the major principles of our 40-year history. People who work for us have belief in Chinatrust and such a culture will not change," he said.
Koo is part of the third generation of the Koo family, one of the wealthiest families in the country.
The banking tycoon, who has extensive contacts in both the business and political world, used to be a Central Standing Committee member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) when it was in power.
Under Koo's leadership, Chinatrust group transformed into Chinatrust Financial in 2002, Taiwan's seventh-largest financial group managing NT$1.62 trillion in assets.
Good at marketing, its flagship unit Chinatrust Commercial Bank (
But this is not enough for Chinatrust if it wants to survive and grow into a regional player.
As Koo Jr began to take over at the helm of the company, he made a bold attempt to acquire the state-controlled Mega Financial, as part of the government's plans to promote banking consolidation and halve the number of financial holding firms to seven.
Koo Jr, 42, dubbed "the most handsome banker in Taiwan," is one of the nation's highest-profile figures. With an MBA degree from Pennsylvania University's Wharton School, Koo Jr takes himself seriously, hoping to match his father's achievements.
To sharpen its competitiveness against foreign rivals, Koo Jr recruited former Citibank Taiwan's head Eric Chen (
Yet Koo Jr may never achieve his lofty ambitions now that his controversial takeover bid for Mega Financial could see him end up behind bars.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
RSS