HSBC Global Asset Management Taiwan Ltd (匯豐中華投信) is to grow local operations by expanding its management team and launching new funds by the end of this year, chief executive officer Chiao Hsin (焦訢) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
The asset management company has about 80 employees, and it would add five senior managers who would be in charge of portfolios and projects, Chiao said.
“The positions would be offered to local talent. We are already interviewing some candidates. It is possible that the positions would be filled in the third quarter,” Chiao said.
Photo: CNA
While it is uncommon for local asset management companies to expand their senior management teams, HSBC Global Asset Taiwan has been committed to deepening its local operations, she said.
The company would also ask for more resources from its parent company to enhance staff training, investment research, risk controls and product design to boost business in the local fund market, Chiao said.
“We have discussed with our overseas investment team the design of a new onshore fund that we plan to launch by the end of this year. We can bring a global perspective in fund design, as HSBC is an international group,” Chiao said.
The company would factor in rate hikes and inflation when it chooses investment targets, as both are expected to persist over the next few years, Chiao said.
The new fund would also have environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) factors, and would comply with tighter rules that were announced by regulators in January, Chiao said.
While regulators have not specified the types of companies in which ESG-themed funds must not invest, HSBC Global Asset Taiwan would not invest in companies that make tobacco products or alcoholic beverages, or run gambling operations, she said.
“Besides those companies, we will not specifically select industries, as a company in an energy-consuming field could still perform well in ESG,” Chiao said.
MORE RESISTANT
ESG funds are more resistant to risks than other types of funds, as the companies that are chosen by such funds usually have two properties — great scale of operations and good cash flow, Chiao said.
The company has introduced 23 offshore funds to local investors, all of which meet the European Supervisory Authorities’ Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulations, Chiao said.
Eight of the funds conform with Article 8 of the regulations, as the companies they invest follow good governance practices and can be called “light green funds,” she said.
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
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
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
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