Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控), the nation’s largest financial services provider by assets, yesterday reported a better-than-expected NT$8.536 billion (US$266.8 million) net profit for last year, or 16 percent growth year-on-year, a company executive said.
The result was 46 percent more than the state-owned company had budgeted in its legislative report, chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮) told a media briefing.
If it were not for the NT$8.9 billion that its subsidiary, Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行), paid out to support the government’s plan to provide a fixed 18 percent interest rate on civil servant pension accounts, the financial services provider would have reported NT$17.4 billion in net profit last year — the second-highest profits among the nation’s 15 financial holding companies, Chang said.
She also promised to do better this year, although the financial institution’s legislative report, compiled a year ago, only budgets for NT$6 billion in pre-tax profit for this year.
“We have internally set a higher goal,” Chang said, refusing to elaborate.
Last year, the firm’s banking arm contributed almost NT$8 billion, or 93 percent of the profit, while its life insurance and securities brokerage arms contributed NT$475 million, or 5 percent, and NT$153 million, or 2 percent, respectively.
Pending legislative approval, the company plans to boost its working capital from NT$45 billion to NT$70 billion, Chang said, adding that the company doesn’t rule out the possibility of expanding through acquisitions if synergies could be created or independent board members could be introduced from abroad.
The company also plans to launch a liaison office in Shanghai by the end of this month after the banking regulator in China gave it the go-ahead last month, she said.
The firm’s insurance arm posted NT$43.5 billion in premium income last year, including NT$31.12 billion in first-year premiums — the nation’s seventh-largest behind leaders Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽), Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) and Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽).
Chang Kuo-ching (張國欽), chairman of BankTaiwan Life Insurance Co (台銀人壽), yesterday vowed to report the nation’s fifth-largest first-year premiums figure within the next three to five years.
He said the life insurer plans to boost its working capital from NT$7 billion to NT$11 billion, pending legislative approval.
Boasting better-than-expected investment returns — NT$1.8 billion in profit from share investments — the life insurer’s vice president, Hsieh Fu-deng (謝福燈), said the company would invest between NT$10 billion and NT$20 billion in Taipei-based commercial office space, including property in Neihu District (內湖), in the near future.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
RSS