The board of Ta Chong Bank (大眾銀行) yesterday approved a proposal to acquire the Second Credit Cooperative of Kaohsiung (高雄二信) for NT$483 million (US$14.5 million), a bank executive said yesterday.
“The deal will greatly boost the number of our branches,” the bank’s executive vice president and spokesperson James Chiu (邱正光) said yesterday by telephone.
The city credit cooperative’s 16 branches in Kaohsiung will increase the bank’s total number of branches nationwide to 70, which is of great value to the bank’s future development, he said.
Chiu added that the bank could buy up smaller rivals in northern Taiwan to strengthen its presence.
The Financial Supervisory Commission’s latest statistics showed that as of February the credit cooperative had suffered NT$4 million in losses and reported a net worth of NT$525 million with a 3.78 percent bad-loan ratio, or NT$538 million in bad loans.
The acquisition is pending final approval from the bank’s shareholders’ at a meeting late next month, the company said yesterday.
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