Taiwanese banks saw net profits from their Chinese operations climb 88 percent last year to NT$5.2 billion (US$164 million) from the previous year, indicating strong funding demand from Taiwan-based companies operating in China, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday.
A total of 13 Taiwanese banks had 18 branches, eight sub-branches and two subsidiaries in China as of the end of last month, the commission said in a statement.
“Most Taiwanese banks are still looking at Shanghai, Suzhou and Guangdong as their major development regions in China,” Banking Bureau Deputy Director-General Jean Chiu (邱淑貞) told a media briefing.
The branches and sub-branches had an outstanding loan balance of NT$106.4 billion, savings business of NT$24.9 billion and a net income of NT$2.9 billion last year, an increase of 113 percent from the previous year, the statement said.
Taiwanese banks’ subsidiaries had an outstanding loan balance of NT$160.6 billion last year, with their savings business standing at NT$219.7 billion and profits of NT$2.3 billion, up 63 percent from the previous year, the statement said.
In related news, the nation’s 16 listed financial holding companies had all submitted their Asian expansion plans for the next three to five years to the commission at the end of last month as requested, the commission said.
In line with FSC Chairman William Tseng’s (曾銘宗) proposal, the nation’s major financial institutions plan to accelerate their expansion in Asia.
“I have not gone through the plans yet, but the commission will help competitive players to successfully expand in Asia,” Tseng said by telephone yesterday.
Tseng said that the commission was still targeting helping three to five Taiwanese financial services providers expand into regional players over the next three to five years.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
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