Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) yesterday expressed willingness to sell its stake in Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行) to the government if it is serious about consolidating state-run financial institutions to create a regional champion.
“We welcome the government to buy our shares in Chang Hwa Bank in a bid to consolidate state-run financial institutions and help them develop into leading regional players,” Taishin chief financial officer Welch Lin (林維俊) told an investors’ conference.
Taishin Financial controls 22.5 percent shares in Chang Hwa Bank, making it the largest shareholder, with a majority control in its board.
The government should take Chang Hwa into consideration, while encouraging domestic financial institutions to expand through acquisitions and mergers, Lin said.
Taishin Financial is to price its stake on par with the book value of NT$45.4 billion (US$1.5 billion), translating into NT$26 earnings per share (EPS), compared with NT$36.57 billion, or EPS of NT$26.12 when Taishin bought the shares from the government in 2005.
The bank-focused conglomerate has since tried unsuccessfully to integrate Chang Hwa due to protests from unions and the legislature, since Chang Hwa owns larger assets.
“We cannot compromise the interest of 200,000 Taishin Financial shareholders in dealing with the issue,” Lin said.
Apart from larger assets, Chang Hwa owns seven branches overseas, including one in the China’s Kunshan, allowing the lender to take advantage of the Chinese market’s higher profit margin and bigger banking business.
Taishin International Bank (台新銀行), the main holding of Taishin Financial, owns only one foreign branch in Hong Kong and its plan to enter China cannot be realized unless the cross-strait service trade pact first clears the legislature.
Taishin Financial — which posted NT$6.14 billion in net profit from January to last month, or NT$0.77 per share — expects monthly income from the treasury market unit to shrink to NT$200 million from a monthly average of NT$300 million in the first quarter, as the Financial Supervisory Commission discourages active sales of risky financial derivatives, company president Joseph Jao (饒世湛) said.
The banking arm is slated to open a branch in Singapore next month and another one in Brisbane, Australia, by the end of the year, as the group seeks to strengthen its presence overseas, Jao said.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
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
RSS