BANKING
Cathay buys Scotiabank unit
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) yesterday said two subsidiaries have signed an agreement to acquire a Malaysian unit of the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) for US$255 million. In a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Cathay Financial said Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) and Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) would split the purchase at 49 percent and 51 percent respectively, adding that the deal is expected to be completed in the second half of this year. In March, Cathay Financial said that acquiring the Bank of Nova Scotia Bhd, a Kuala Lumpur-based subsidiary of the Canadian bank, would pave the way for its further expansion in Southeast Asia.
TELECOMS
CHT senior official to resign
Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecom, yesterday said chief financial officer and senior executive vice president Chen Bo-yung (陳伯鏞) would resign from his positions, effective on Thursday next week. Pending the appointment of Chen’s successor, Chunghwa Telecom said in a news release that its board has appointed president Sheih Chi-mau (謝繼茂) to serve as interim chief financial officer. Chen has been serving in the two positions since May 2014 at the invitation of then-Chunghwa Telecom chairman Rick Tsai (蔡力行). Tsai stepped down in December last year.
INDUSTRY
Hon Hai 98th on Forbes list
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) was ranked 98th on this year’s Forbes Global 2000 list of the world’s biggest and most powerful public companies, making it the only Taiwanese firm to feature in the top 100. This year, a total of 46 Taiwanese companies appeared on the list published on Wednesday, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), which was 127th, and Chunghwa Telecom at 720th. Other Taiwanese companies in the the top 1,000 are Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 870th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 884th and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) at 991st.
ELECTRONICS
InFocus to receive capital
Hon Hai is to make a capital injection of 98.71 million yuan (US$14.39 million) into indirectly owned subsidiary InFocus Precision Industry (Shenzhen) Co Ltd (益富可視精密工業) as additional working capital for long-term investments, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Thursday. The investment is to be carried out by a unit of Hon Hai’s Hong Kong-listed subsidiary FIH Mobile Ltd (富智康), with InFocus’ total registered capital to increase to approximately 140.80 million yuan, FIH said.
BANKING
Overdue mortgages hit high
Local banks’ outstanding mortgage loans last month grew 5 percent year-on-year to NT$6.42 trillion, a record high, while construction loans hit NT$1.66 trillion, up 2 percent and marking the fifth consecutive period of annual growth, the central bank said on Thursday. The Chinese-language Commercial Times newspaper yesterday said local lenders are reportedly offering mortgage rates as low as 1.44 percent per annum in a bid to grab a bigger piece of the home loan market amid large quantities of unoccupied housing and presale projects. Developers with good credit can obtain land and construction loans with interest rates as low as 1.8 percent and 2 percent respectively, compared with the 3 percent to 3.5 percent on offer two years ago, the newspaper said.
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
Video streaming giant Netflix is launching a talent cultivation program in Taiwan aimed at producing high-quality Mandarin content, the company announced in a press release on Thursday. Netflix Chinese language content head Maya Huang (黃怡玫) said that Netflix has long invested in the Taiwanese market, citing the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity launched last year as an example. The fund would continue to dedicate resources to discovering content with the potential to be developed into Chinese-language projects, she added. The financing for the new talent projects seeks to create an ecosystem for content creators and professional development programs, she said. The talent projects
APPRECIATION: The central bank stepped in to stabilize the NT dollar after a surge in foreign institutional investment, triggered by optimism about tariffs and US Fed policy Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, as the central bank intervened in the currency market to curb the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation against the US dollar. Foreign exchange reserves increased by US$5.48 billion from May, reaching an all-time high of US$598.43 billion, the central bank said on Friday. While the central bank did not disclose the scale of its intervention, Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民) said that the currency market remained relatively stable until the middle of last month. However, a shift occurred following the US Federal Reserve’s signal of a
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