Rakuten International Commercial Bank Co (樂天國際商銀) earlier this month applied with the Financial Supervisory Commission for an operating license, leading two other Web-only banks, the commission said yesterday.
The bank, which is 51 percent owned by Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten Inc and 49 percent by IBF Financial Holdings Co (國票金控), completed its one-month operation simulation test before submitting the application, Banking Bureau Chief Secretary Phil Tong (童政彰) told a news conference in New Taipei City.
The commission is reviewing the simulation record, one of the materials it uses to determine whether to grant a license, Tong said.
The commission has yet to receive applications from the two other Web-only banks — Next Bank (將來銀行) and Line Bank (連線商業銀行), Tong said, adding that it expects all three virtual banks to launch their operations by the end of this year.
“If everything goes smoothly, Rakuten International Commercial Bank would be able to begin operating at the start of October,” bank chairman Chien Ming-jen (簡明仁) told an investors’ conference in Taipei yesterday.
It might even be the first among the three to launch services in the nation, he said.
The bank completed its corporate registration in May, after the commission gave it permission to establish the bank in July last year.
For the first year after launch, the bank is expected to focus on personal deposits and loans, mortgages and corporate financing, while capital expenditure would mainly be used to build up its system and on recruitment, Chien said.
Separately, IBF Financial reported that its net profit rose 10.13 percent to NT$1.49 billion (US$50.35 million) in the first half of the year.
The company attributed the increase to a 7 percent profit gain at its bills finance unit International Bills Finance Corp (IBFC, 國際票券) to NT$1.3 billion and a 4.59 percent gain at its securities arm IBF Securities Co (國票證券) to NT$387 million.
IBFC — which acts as a broker and dealer of short-term bills, certifier, underwriter and guarantor of commercial paper — would concentrate on green financing to gain new momentum.
Its lending surged 253 percent year-on-year to NT$12.24 billion during the first six months of this year, IBFC said.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS