SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) is reviewing its lending operations to improve internal oversight after a spate of questionable loans led to heavy fines and a management reshuffle, senior executives said yesterday.
“We are re-examining credit applications to make sure they all meet regulatory requirements... The probe by the Financial Supervisory Commission will show if the company is guilty of compliance failure,” SinoPac Financial chief investment officer Eric Chuang (莊銘福) said on the sidelines of the inauguration of a new Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) branch in Hualien.
The probe came after a tip-off from the group’s employees that affiliated SinoPac Leasing Corp (永豐金租賃) granted a US$1.35 million (NT$4.22 billion) loan to J&R Trading Co, a foreign shell company owned by Sun Power Development and Construction Co (三寶建設) and with investment from papermaking conglomerate YFY Inc (永豐餘控股) and E Ink Holdings Co (元太科技).
Both YFY and E Ink are affiliates of SinoPac Financial, raising ethical and legal concerns over the loan, especially in the absence of sufficient collateral, local media cited the employee as saying.
SinoPac Financial denied the accusation, saying the leasing unit secured equities and subordinate claims on real estate as collateral that are estimated to be worth 85 percent of the loan.
The borrower carried out the financing through a foreign company as is standard practice for Taiwanese firms based in China, SinoPac Financial said.
Unlike banks, leasing firms cannot demand the use of land as collateral in China and the group decided to classify the loan as “unsecured” to meet tighter standards, SinoPac Financial said.
“The company should emerge from the probe unscathed,” Chuang said.
Last month, Bank SinoPac, the main subsidiary of SinoPac Financial, incurred a fine of NT$10 million for loans paid to Taipei-based dentistry supplier Tingsing Trading Co (鼎興貿易).
The dentistry supplier allegedly bilked NT$3.78 billion from 13 lenders, including Bank SinoPac, because it is owned by an in-law of a former Bank SinoPac director, prosecutors said.
SinoPac Financial reshuffled its top management positions after the fine.
Acting Bank SinoPac president Philip Wei (魏哲弘), whose appointment is awaiting regulatory approval, said he and his colleagues are sorting out their connections because many people do not know their distant relatives, whose conduct could have legal implications in their profession.
Ho Shou-chuan (何壽川), the patriarch at SinoPac Financial, YFY, E Ink and other businesses, has adopted a strict approach to deal with family and friends, Wei said.
A review of all loans in excess of NT$100 million is being undertaken, officials said.
The Hualien branch is intended to deepen the lender’s presence in the east of the nation, where customers prefer traditional human contact to online transactions, Bank SinoPac said.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
RSS