HSBC Bank (Taiwan) Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) yesterday announced that a NT$29 million (US$1 million) green trade loan has been arranged for Taylor Hopkinson Ltd’s Taiwan branch. The banking facility is to assist Taylor Hopkinson with its financing needs as it finds quality renewable energy talent for offshore wind farm projects.
Harnessing wind power has become a critical part of the government’s efforts to develop renewable energy and the Ministry of Economic Affairs expects the wind industry, onshore and offshore, to generate 20,000 jobs by 2025.
HSBC Taiwan said that the financing would boost the nation’s green economy and bolster the growth momentum of wind power.
Taylor Hopkinson, a UK-based consultancy specializing in renewable energy and clean technology recruitment for more than a decade, has a strong track record of placing renewables professionals in existing and emerging markets internationally.
The company is helping to source the talent for Taiwan’s first offshore wind farms, Formosa 1 (海洋風電) and Formosa 2 (海能風電).
Cash gaps can often occur between trade receivables and payables during the recruitment process, so HSBC Taiwan’s trade loan facility would help Taylor Hopkinson handle financing needs that arise as it assembles teams for offshore wind farm projects.
Unlike a traditional loan, the facility’s green services loan would meet Taylor Hopkinson’s specific sourcing needs, to help the world transition to sustainable energy. The facility would give Taylor Hopkinson’s recruitment efforts more flexibility when costs are incurred.
“We are pleased to arrange HSBC’s very first trade loan focusing on green services in Taiwan for Taylor Hopkinson,” HSBC Taiwan commercial banking head Stanley Hsiao (蕭仲程) said. “This inaugural green trade loan arrangement is of huge significance to HSBC Taiwan. Using our expertise and market leadership in both sustainable finance and trade finance, we came up with a pioneering financing solution that catered to our client’s needs.”
“This not only represents the close collaboration between HSBC and our customers, but demonstrates the vast experience of HSBC in participating in green financing, which gives us an edge in working with clients that support Taiwan’s green ambition,” Hsiao added.
As a founding member of the Loan Market Association, HSBC has worked with the association to develop market standards, or green loan principles, for lending to eligible sustainable projects.
“Our customers are increasingly prioritizing sustainability as a top requirement when making business decisions — and we expect this trend to accelerate, especially in the green energy space,” Hsiao said. “We see that trade financing has extended to services.”
“Opportunities to offer trade and services financing arise in various sectors and industries, including outsourced services to recruit personnel for infrastructure construction,” Hsiao said.
“Planning, constructing and maintaining each wind farm requires talent from a wide range of backgrounds, including electrical and civil engineering and data analytics, as well as operational skills,” Taylor Hopkinson CEO Tom Hopkinson said. “The growth of the industry means that there is more and more demand for talent in this field.”
“As the leading recruitment advisory partner for the world’s renewable energy leaders, we aim to enable a diverse, global workforce that will drive the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” Hopkinson added. “We are pleased to have garnered support and secured this green facility from HSBC. This serves as solid proof of our capability in sustainability, as it is a testament to our commitment and efforts in moving green initiatives forward.”
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
JOINT EFFORTS: MediaTek would partner with Denso to develop custom chips to support the car-part specialist company’s driver-assist systems in an expanding market MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s largest mobile phone chip designer, yesterday said it is working closely with Japan’s Denso Corp to build a custom automotive system-on-chip (SoC) solution tailored for advanced driver-assistance systems and cockpit systems, adding another customer to its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business. This effort merges Denso’s automotive-grade safety expertise and deep vehicle integration with MediaTek’s technologies cultivated through the development of Media- Tek’s Dimensity AX, leveraging efficient, high-performance SoCs and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to offer a scalable, production-ready platform for next-generation driver assistance, the company said in a statement yesterday. “Through this collaboration, we are bringing two
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their