Sagging consumer confidence is the biggest challenge facing the next administration, a bank executive said yesterday.
The Presidential Office, not Wall Street, will play a greater role in turning the local economy around, Greg Gibb, chief operations officer at Taishin Financial Holding Co (
Gibb, formerly a managing partner at McKinsey & Co, said he had confidence in the local economy as he believed the presidential election, scheduled for March 22, would bring about "changes" in cross-strait relations and government policy.
He also sees great potential in domestic demand, with spending currently inhibited because of political concerns.
sound fundamentals
"People are just afraid of spending despite the nation's sound economic fundamentals," the Taishin executive said.
Taking the US loan market as an example, Gibb said that US consumers had reached their credit limit -- be it secured or unsecured loans -- but in Taiwan, only some 35 percent of households had taken out home mortgages, while the remainder tended to tighten their belts after putting in their life savings in property.
This represents an untapped market that the banking sector could develop, he said.
To create demand and win new customers, banks need to be "information-savvy," he said.
Banks that know their customers better or are more capable of launching innovative products" will win, he said.
Gibbs touted the success of Taishin's newly launched RT-Mart (
merger plan
Taishin, owner of the nation's third-largest credit-card issuer, yesterday also confirmed its share-swap plan with Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (
The company plans to proceed with the merger at an ``appropriate'' time, Taishin president Lin Keh-hsiao (
Lin denied a report by the Chinese-language Apple Daily on Feb. 18 that Taishin may back out of the proposed merger with Chang Hwa and may sell or transfer its stake in the bank. The report did not cite a source.
Taishin, which owns 22.5 percent of Chang Hwa, has said it plans to acquire the remainder of the nation's eighth-largest bank by assets through a share swap.
The company did say on Jan. 15 that it would retract a Dec. 27 proposal to conduct the share swap with Chang Hwa after financial advisers for the two companies failed to reach an agreement.
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
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS