CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) would seek to maintain a 60 percent dividend payout ratio after it recorded profit of NT$72.03 billion (US$2.18 billion), or earnings per share of NT$3.64, last year, company president Rachael Kao (高麗雪) told an earnings conference in Taipei yesterday.
The board of directors at CTBC Financial would discuss the dividend policy next month, Kao said.
A proposed 60 percent payout ratio suggests a cash dividend of NT$2.18 per share.
Photo: Lee Chin-hui, Taipei Times
While uncertainty is escalating for financial markets this year, the landscape appears favorable for financial institutions, with the US Federal Reserve expected to cut interest rates in the next two quarters, which would benefit main subsidiary CTBC Bank’s (中信銀行) interest income and boost the asset value of its insurance arm, Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽), Kao said.
Rate cuts would also help weaken the US dollar and spur loan demand, which are positive for interest income, she said, adding that the New Taiwan dollar is likely to remain volatile.
Separately, state-run Hua Nan Financial Holding Co (華南金控) said it would adopt a conservative approach to real-estate lending to support the efforts of Taiwan’s central bank’s to cool the housing market.
“Overall real-estate lending is expected to hold steady from last year, or change mildly,” Hua Nan Financial president Robert Li (李耀卿) told investors.
The conglomerate said that its flagship unit Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行) has more than NT$100 billion of pending construction loans and related mortgages.
The lender has halted new construction loan applications and sought to lower its real-estate lending from 40 percent to 39.4 percent of total loans, the conglomerate said.
Loans already approved would be disbursed in an orderly manner, with priority given to first-home buyers, owners of houses for self-occupancy and those who qualify for the government’s favorable lending terms, it said.
Hua Nan Bank is also eyeing deposit growth this year, particularly from small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as individual depositors, Hua Nan Financial said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
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STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
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