Fuhwa Financial Holding Co (
The drawn-out merger finally took effect yesterday. Yuanta had been delisted from the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) in the meantime.
"We expect earnings per share to exceed NT$1 this year," Michael Ma (馬維辰), vice chairman of Fuhwa Commercial Bank (復華銀行), said on the sidelines of the merger ceremony yesterday.
The drivers for the renewed profitability come mainly from the lucrative securities arm, coupled with the banking unit's recovering financial condition, Ma said, who will be the chief operations officer of Fuhwa Financial in the future.
Fuhwa Financial incurred a loss of NT$3.08 billion last year, or negative NT$0.98 per share, due to mounting bad loans in its banking unit.
The ceremony attracted high-profile operators from the nation's financial sector, including Daniel Tsai (
Fuhwa Financial will develop into a brokerage-centric financial holding firm, with the securities business contributing over 70 percent of income in future, with the remainder coming from its banking unit, said Victor Ma (馬維建), chairman of Fuhwa Securities Finance Co (復華證金).
Victor Ma will take over the presidency of the financial group in the second half of the year.
The company plans to undertake a NT$22 billion capital reduction from its brokerage arm after completing the integration between Yuanta Core Pacific Securities and Fuhwa Securities Co (
It would then inject up to NT$12 billion into the weaker banking unit in order to lift the capital adequacy ratio above 10 percent -- from the current 9.5 percent -- in order to facilitate the bank's overseas expansion.
The remaining NT$10 billion would be used to acquire targets locally and internationally in the securities and banking arena, but not problematic financial institutions recently taken over by the government, Michael Ma and Victor Ma said.
For its planned overseas expansion, the bank will target the Vietnamese market and leverage the footing already established by Yuanta through its close ties with Vietnam-based Taiwanese firms in order to tap into the fast-growing economy, Victor Ma said.
Victor Ma added that he expects overseas businesses to contribute 25 percent of the financial group's income within the next five years, compared to 15 percent currently at the Yuanta unit.
The company is also mulling whether to seek a strategic partnership with an overseas bank to introduce management and product know-how, Michael Ma said.
The merger means that Fuhwa Financial now leads the nation's brokerage market with a 12 percent share and has boosted its total number of outlets to 220.
Fuhwa Financial closed down 5 percent at NT$15.20 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday. A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported. One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed
RSS