HSBC Holdings PLC, the world's fourth-largest bank by market value, may add 50 branches in four years in Japan to offer more banking to the wealthy, the Financial Times reported.
The expansion would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the newspaper said, citing sources that it didn't identify. HSBC currently has two branches in the country, one in Tokyo and the other in Osaka, which do corporate and private banking.
"We intend to focus on the mass-affluent market and plan to expand our distribution network," said David Hall, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for HSBC, declining to comment specifically on details in the report. HSBC is looking at entering consumer banking, he said.
HSBC, which opened its first Japanese branch in Yokohama in 1866, is seeking a greater share of the US$13 trillion of financial assets held by Japanese individuals in an economy in its longest period of postwar expansion. Japan grew an annualized 5.5 percent in the fourth quarter, the fastest pace in three years.
"Japan may not be growing fast, but its people are very wealthy," said Albert Cheng, an analyst at Quam Ltd in Hong Kong.
HSBC, one of the first banks to open an office in Japan, will offer wealth management products targeting higher-income customers, using the Internet to overcome its small branch network, said Michael Smith, chief executive officer of the bank's Asian operations, in an interview last October.
The bank, which began private banking private services in Japan in 1996, caters to individuals with financial assets over ?300 million (US$2.5 million). The nation's households have 51 percent of their assets in cash or deposits, compared to 16 percent in the US and 26 percent in the UK, according to HSBC documents released this month.
Profit before tax in Japan was US$123 million last year, compared to US$708 million in China and US$5.2 billion in Hong Kong.
Foreign banks face challenges in the country as they lack large networks to attract customers and Japan is considered to have too many banks for its population. Japan Post, the country's postal system and the world's largest savings bank, alone has more than 24,000 branches.
New York-based Citigroup Inc, the biggest US bank, had ?5.8 trillion of assets in Japan at the end of last March. The bank launched a US$13.4 billion takeover bid for Japan's third-largest brokerage, Nikko Cordial Corp, earlier this month.
Japan's largest banks have struggled to boost revenue as the lowest interest rates among developed economies and competition in the corporate lending market prevented an improvement in loan margins. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Japan's biggest bank, posted a 42 percent decline in net income in the last quarter of last year.
The Bank of Japan raised its overnight lending rate to 0.5 percent from 0.25 last month, and bank lending rose in February last year for the first time in the last 10 years.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
RSS