Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), the nation’s second-largest financial services provider by assets, beat its local peers in overall proficiency ranking last year by pooling the resources of its major subsidiaries to lower risks and boost profitability, a survey released yesterday found.
The annual survey, which has been conducted by the Chinese-language Business Today magazine (今周刊) and Taiwan Finance Association (臺灣財務金融學會) since 2005, grades domestic financial service providers in terms of their financial, management, strategic and operational proficiency.
Peng Jin-lung (彭金隆), a risk management and insurance professor at Shih Chien University, attributed Fubon Financial’s earnings ability to a positive synergy effect from its acquisition of ING Antai Life Insurance Co (安泰人壽).
“The acquisition allows the company to take better advantage of its banking and insurance arms, which helped each other buffer the blow of the global financial crisis in 2008 and strengthen mutual sales amid the economic recovery last year,” Peng told a media briefing.
Peng said not all acquisitions produced positive impact, only those with the right scale.
Fubon Financial president Victor Kung (龔天行) said the company would improve its financial performance for this year after posting NT$2.47 earnings per share last year and NT$2.16 for the first eight months of this year.
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) placed second in the survey, although the company, the largest financial services provider by assets, outperformed rivals in expansion strategy overseas.
David Sun (孫至德), an executive vice president at Cathay Financial, said strategy proficiency meant growth potential and the company’s goal was stable growth.
While the company owns the nation’s largest insurance unit, Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽), it derived most of its income from its banking arm, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行), both last year and this year, Sun said.
Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控), which has received a medium ranking in recent years, secured the third place last year because recovering risk appetite boosted profitability for its securities brokerage, Yuanta Securities Co (元大證券).
However, Shen Chung-hua (沈中華), a finance professor at National Taiwan University, said the lack of strong expansion strategy overseas and financial subsidiaries might limit Yuanta Financial’s development.
Chuang Yu-de (莊有德), executive vice president at Yuanta Financial, said the room for overseas expansion was limited for securities brokerages, compared with banks and insurance companies.
Chuang said the company would remain focused on risk management and stable growth.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
The average pay to employees by ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) was the highest among the companies listed on the local main board last year, while contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) ranked seventh, the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) said on Monday. Data compiled by the exchange showed ASE Technology, the world’s largest chip packaging and testing services provider, paid its employees an average of NT$6.28 million (US$199,746) last year, up 40 percent from a year earlier. TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and the most profitable company in Taiwan, paid its employees NT$4.09 million on average, up
RSS