The nation’s 16 financial holding companies last quarter cut their combined lending to China to NT$671.34 billion (US$22.73 billion) from NT$698.26 billion in the first quarter, down 9.2 percent from NT$739.71 billion a year earlier, data released on Saturday by the Financial Supervisory Commission showed.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) yesterday reported that last quarter’s figures marked the fourth consecutive quarter of decline and were the lowest ever.
The drop was mainly due to concerns over US-China trade tensions and the COVID-19 pandemic, the commission said, adding that China’s high credit risk has significantly reduced Taiwanese financial firms’ willingness to lend to riskier companies there.
The financial holding companies’ combined foreign lending last quarter fell to NT$3.54 trillion, compared with NT$3.56 trillion in the first quarter and NT$3.58 trillion a year earlier, the data showed.
Lending to China has been on a downward trend and accounted for 18.96 percent of total foreign lending last quarter, which was the lowest on record, the commission said.
The ratio was 19.6 percent in the first quarter and 21.2 percent in the second quarter of last year, it said.
The world economy and capital markets faced serious turbulence in the second quarter, as the global spread of COVID-19 intensified, making it difficult for Taiwanese financial firms to grasp the situation in overseas markets, the commission said.
Many financial holding companies last quarter shifted their China lending business to focus mainly on syndicated loans to diversify risks, it added.
Compared with the second quarter of last year, Taiwanese financial firms’ lending to China had fallen by NT$68.4 billion as of the end of June, the data showed.
As their overall China lending remained as high as NT$600 billion to NT$700 billion, the reduction was still moderate and within a reasonable range, the Liberty Times quoted Banking Bureau officials as saying.
The financial holding companies’ combined foreign exposure — including foreign investment, and corporate and interbank lending — totaled NT$20.42 trillion in the second quarter, the data showed.
Last quarter, China remained the second-largest market for Taiwanese financial holding companies in terms of exposure, at NT$2.55 trillion, following the US, but ahead of the UK, France, Hong Kong, Australia and Japan, the commission said.
However, exposure to China last quarter was down 2.3 percent from NT$2.61 trillion in the previous quarter, representing an annual fall of 3.41 percent from NT$2.64 trillion, the data showed.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
France is developing domestic production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries with an eye on industrial independence, but Asian experts are proving key in launching operations. In the Verkor factory outside the northern city of Dunkirk, which was inaugurated on Thursday, foreign specialists, notably from South Korea and Malaysia, are training the local staff. Verkor is the third battery gigafactory to open in northern France in a region that has become known as “Battery Valley.” At the Automotive Energy Supply Corp (AESC) factory near the city of Douai, where production has been under way for several months, Chinese engineers and technicians supervise French recruits. “They
RSS