BANKING
TCB, BOC to sign MOU
Taiwan Cooperative Bank (TCB, 合作金庫銀行) said on Friday it would sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Bank of China (BOC, 中國銀行) on Tuesday on cooperation between the two banks. Under the MOU, the two banks will work together in providing several financial services, including foreign exchange, trade financing, syndicated loans, interbank lending and loans for small and medium enterprises, the bank said. It also indicated that the two partners would soon launch personnel exchanges to develop better mutual understanding. The Taiwanese bank is also scheduled to open a Chinese branch in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, on Wednesday. The branch is targeted at Taiwanese companies operating in China.
FINANCE
SEC greenlights new rules
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved new accounting rules designed to help investors assess fraud risks and material changes in a public company’s financial condition. The changes are “designed to benefit investors by establishing requirements that enhance the effectiveness of the auditor’s assessment of and response to the risks of material misstatement in an audit,” the regulator said yesterday in a statement. Changes include more emphasis on fraud risks, disclosures, multilocation audit requirements and a new concept of materiality, the SEC said as it approved the rules, proposed in September by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The risk standards replace rules written 20 to 30 years ago, it said.
TAXATION
Colombia mulls tax extension
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said his government is considering extending for one year and broadening a tax on high-income earners to help pay for the damage caused by the worst rains in 30 years. The tax, which currently is levied on people with assets of more than 3 billion pesos (US$1.5 million), may be extended to those with more than 1.5 billion pesos, Santos said in an interview with RCN Radio. The tax was scheduled to expire in 2014. The government is not considering raising the value-added tax, Santos said. Colombia on Thursday lowered its growth estimate for this year to 4.5 percent from 5 percent.
BANKING
Credit Suisse sells portfolio
Credit Suisse is selling a US$2.8 billion property portfolio in one of the largest bank sales of distressed loans since the 2008 financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The Swiss banking giant is to sell the portfolio for US$1.2 billion to Apollo Management LP, the newspaper reported. The loans were for apartment buildings in Germany and hotels in a number of European countries in areas hard hit by the economic crisis, it said citing sources familiar with the sale.
BANKING
US investigates Swiss banks
The US Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into small Swiss regional banks which may have helped Americans evade taxes, the New York Times reported, citing two people briefed on the matter. The investigation will also look at Wall Street banks that provide banking services to these regional banks, known as cantonal banks, the paper said in an article published on Thursday. The Wall Street banks might have been used by the regional banks to pool client money so individual clients could not be identified by US authorities, the paper said.
JITTERS: Nexperia has a 20 percent market share for chips powering simpler features such as window controls, and changing supply chains could take years European carmakers are looking into ways to scratch components made with parts from China, spooked by deepening geopolitical spats playing out through chipmaker Nexperia BV and Beijing’s export controls on rare earths. To protect operations from trade ructions, several automakers are pushing major suppliers to find permanent alternatives to Chinese semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. The industry is considering broader changes to its supply chain to adapt to shifting geopolitics, Europe’s main suppliers lobby CLEPA head Matthias Zink said. “We had some indications already — questions like: ‘How can you supply me without this dependency on China?’” Zink, who also
At least US$50 million for the freedom of an Emirati sheikh: That is the king’s ransom paid two weeks ago to militants linked to al-Qaeda who are pushing to topple the Malian government and impose Islamic law. Alongside a crippling fuel blockade, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) has made kidnapping wealthy foreigners for a ransom a pillar of its strategy of “economic jihad.” Its goal: Oust the junta, which has struggled to contain Mali’s decade-long insurgency since taking power following back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, by scaring away investors and paralyzing the west African country’s economy.
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
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