Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA (BBVA), Spain’s second-largest bank by market value, yesterday upgraded its Taipei office into a branch, with a view to helping local firms deepen their presence in Latin America, BBVA chairman Francisco Gonzalez said yesterday.
The Spanish banker said the eurozone is heading in the right direction based on developments the past week and BBVA has enough funds to withstand the financial turmoil.
“With a focus on investment banking and global markets business, the new branch is designed to meet the needs of Taiwan’s large multinational corporations and institutional investors, especially those with interests in Latin America,” Gonzalez told a media briefing in Taipei.
BBVA Taiwan aims to position itself as a provider of structured finance, commercial lending, syndicated loans, corporate finance and capital markets in foreign markets where local lenders do not have operations, such as Latin America, Spain, Portugal and parts of the US, Gonzales said.
The Spanish banking group, which employs 111,306 workers in 7,466 branches in 33 countries, is the largest financial institution in Mexico and has leading franchises in South America and the US Sunbelt, Gonzalez said.
It currently has a modest operation in Taiwan, with a staff of 15 at its office at Taipei 101 in Xinyi District (信義), Taipei branch general manager Philip Li (李志明) said.
BBVA, which recently sold its Puerto Rico operations for US$500 million in cash, is in the process of divesting more distressed assets, but is not in a hurry, Gonzalez said.
The assets BBVA is trying to sell include a mixture of repossessed real estate and non-performing loans.
“We are not in a hurry and we are waiting for better bids ... Those bids were really low a year ago, but are now going up,” he said.
Furthermore, BBVA has no intention of ending its strategic partnership with China’s CITIC Bank (中國中信銀行), Gonzalez said.
BBVA set up a representative office in 2006 and is the first European bank to open a branch in Taipei in the past six years.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, booked its first-ever profit from its Arizona subsidiary in the first half of this year, four years after operations began, a company financial statement showed. Wholly owned by TSMC, the Arizona unit contributed NT$4.52 billion (US$150.1 million) in net profit, compared with a loss of NT$4.34 billion a year earlier, the statement showed. The company attributed the turnaround to strong market demand and high factory utilization. The Arizona unit counts Apple Inc, Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc among its major customers. The firm’s first fab in Arizona began high-volume production
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE: The Japanese company is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence linchpins Nvidia Corp and TSMC Softbank Group Corp agreed to buy US$2 billion of Intel Corp stock, a surprise deal to shore up a struggling US name while boosting its own chip ambitions. The Japanese company, which is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence (AI) linchpins Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), is to pay US$23 a share — a small discount to Intel’s last close. Shares of the US chipmaker, which would issue new stock to Softbank, surged more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. Softbank’s stock fell as much as 5.4 percent on Tuesday in Tokyo, its
COLLABORATION: Softbank would supply manufacturing gear to the factory, and a joint venture would make AI data center equipment, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) would operate a US factory owned by Softbank Group Corp, setting up what is in the running to be the first manufacturing site in the Japanese company’s US$500 billion Stargate venture with OpenAI and Oracle Corp. Softbank is acquiring Hon Hai’s electric-vehicle plant in Ohio, but the Taiwanese company would continue to run the complex after turning it into an artificial intelligence (AI) server production plant, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) said yesterday. Softbank would supply manufacturing gear to the factory, and a joint venture between the two companies would make AI data
The prices of gasoline and diesel at domestic fuel stations are to rise NT$0.1 and NT$0.4 per liter this week respectively, after international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to rise to NT$27.3, NT$28.8 and NT$30.8 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to rise to NT$26.2 per liter at CPC stations and NT$26 at Formosa pumps, they said. The announcements came after international crude oil prices
RSS