DBS Bank Ltd (DBS) has completed its acquisition of Citigroup Inc’s consumer banking business in Taiwan over the weekend, it announced yesterday.
The move came as DBS seeks to augment its presence in key Asian markets where Citi is downsizing as part of a strategic refresh.
The Singaporean banking group said the transaction — including Citi’s retail banking, credit card, mortgage and unsecured lending businesses, as well as the transfer of nearly 3,000 employees — allowed it to become the largest foreign lender in Taiwan by assets.
Photo: CNA
DBS Bank Taiwan (星展台灣) now has a clear lead in loans, deposits, credit cards and investments among foreign players, the Singaporean banking group said in a statement.
Its number of consumer banking customers has more than doubled to more than 1.1 million, while total loans soared 1.5 times and deposits spiked 1.6 times, it said, adding that credit card accounts grew fivefold to more than 3 million.
DBS Group Holdings Ltd chief executive officer Piyush Gupta said that the integration of Citi Consumer Taiwan fell in line with the group’s strategy to build meaningful scale in core Asian markets.
“By bringing a prized Citi franchise into our fold, we accelerate our consumer business growth in Taiwan by at least 10 years,” Gupta said in the statement.
“We will be able to provide more value to our customers, helping them grow their wealth through innovative products, and helping business owners expand into new markets or participate in regional trade flows,” he said.
DBS Taiwan general manager Ng Sier Han (黃思翰) said he welcomed new Citi colleagues to the DBS family and described the transition as seamless.
The enlarged franchise gives the bank greater opportunity to offer best-in-class products and services to its customers, Ng said.
Citi said that its institutional client businesses in Taiwan were excluded from the sale as it remains focused on serving that segment in Taiwan.
“As we conclude the sale of our consumer business in Taiwan, we remain committed to growing our market-leading institutional franchise and supporting clients in the market and across the region through our global network,” Citi Asia Pacific CEO Peter Babej said.
Since announcing its intention to exit consumer banking across 14 markets in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Mexico as part of its strategic refresh, Citi has signed sales agreements in nine markets and has closed sales in eight: Taiwan, Australia, Bahrain, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Citi plans to complete the sale of its Indonesia consumer business later this year. The previously announced wind downs of Citi’s consumer business in China and South Korea and overall presence in Russia are in progress, it said in a statement.
Citi also said it would pursue an initial public offering of its consumer, small business and middle-market banking operations in Mexico, and would restart the exit process for its consumer banking business in Poland later this year, subject to market conditions.
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
OPTIMISTIC: Inflation still has a chance of remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent alert level, as Taiwan’s economy is resilient with healthy exports, the NDC minister said Taiwan’s inflation could exceed 2 percent this year if oil prices continue to surge amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, prompting the government to reassess its economic outlook, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. DGBAS Minister Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the agency’s earlier growth forecast of 1.68 percent in the consumer price index (CPI) and 7.71 percent for GDP this year did not account for the ongoing Middle East conflict and would need revision, if tensions persist. The previous forecast assumed an average international crude price of
RSS