HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's largest bank by market value, announced that it had signed a deal yesterday to acquire Chailease Credit Services Co (迪和), one of the nation's leading factoring companies, in a move to expand its international factoring business.
Taiwan is the world's second- largest factoring market, after Germany.
Factoring companies buy other companies' accounts receivables -- money owed by customers to a third party in exchange for goods or services that have been delivered but not paid for -- and then collect them from the debtor.
The 100 percent acquisition of Chailease Credit will be completed in the first quarter, Kenneth Cheng (
Cheng declined to disclose the sum of the all-cash acquisition. He said, however, that the amount would be calculated based on Chailease Credit's net income last year. Chailease has net assets worth US$10 million, he added.
Chailease Credit, which belongs to Chailease Finance Co (中租迪和) under the Chinatrust Group (中信集團), was set up in 1987 and is the sixth-largest factoring firm in Taiwan.
It had a gross asset value of NT$3,264 billion (US$99.6 million) at the end of 2005 and focuses mainly on two-factor export trade, handling transactions in both buyer and seller-use factoring.
More than 70 percent of Chailease Credit's turnover is derived from export factoring business, while import and local factoring account for 20 percent and 10 percent respectively, Cheng said.
"Chailease Credit is established in the area of export factoring. It has a strong sales force and a long history. The purchase matches our strategy as HSBC wants to increase its international factoring business," he said.
HSBC already has a small factoring operation in Taiwan.
The acquisition will substantially increase its market share and add to its increasingly popular cross-border services in the region, a HSBC statement said.
MARKET LEADERSHIP: Investors are flocking to Nvidia, drawn by the company’s long-term fundamntals, dominant position in the AI sector, and pricing and margin power Two years after Nvidia Corp made history by becoming the first chipmaker to achieve a US$1 trillion market capitalization, an even more remarkable milestone is within its grasp: becoming the first company to reach US$4 trillion. After the emergence of China’s DeepSeek (深度求索) sent the stock plunging earlier this year and stoked concerns that outlays on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure were set to slow, Nvidia shares have rallied back to a record. The company’s biggest customers remain full steam ahead on spending, much of which is flowing to its computing systems. Microsoft Corp, Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc are
Luxury fashion powerhouse Prada SpA has acknowledged the ancient Indian roots of its new sandal design after the debut of the open-toe footwear sparked a furor among Indian artisans and politicians thousands of miles from the catwalk in Italy. Images from Prada’s fashion show in Milan last weekend showed models wearing leather sandals with a braided design that resembled handmade Kolhapuri slippers with designs dating back to the 12th century. A wave of criticism in the media and from lawmakers followed over the Italian brand’s lack of public acknowledgement of the Indian sandal design, which is named after a city in the
The US overtaking China as Taiwan’s top export destination could boost industrial development and wage growth, given the US is a high-income economy, an economist said yesterday. However, Taiwan still needs to diversify its export markets due to the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s administration, said Chiou Jiunn-rong (邱俊榮), an economics professor at National Central University. Taiwan’s exports soared to a record US$51.74 billion last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products and continued orders, with information and communication technology (ICT) and audio/video products leading all sectors. The US reclaimed its position as Taiwan’s top export market, accounting for
INVESTOR RESILIENCE? An analyst said that despite near-term pressures, foreign investors tend to view NT dollar strength as a positive signal for valuation multiples Morgan Stanley has flagged a potential 10 percent revenue decline for Taiwan’s tech hardware sector this year, as a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar begins to dent the earnings power of major exporters. In what appears to be the first such warning from a major foreign brokerage, the US investment bank said the currency’s strength — fueled by foreign capital inflows and expectations of US interest rate cuts — is compressing profit margins for manufacturers with heavy exposure to US dollar-denominated revenues. The local currency has surged about 10 percent against the greenback over the past quarter and yesterday breached
RSS