The government plans to have roughly 10 commercial banks take over 36 ailing grassroots financial institutions, Minister of Finance Yen Ching-chang (顏慶章) said yesterday.
Yen promised early yesterday that the ministry would later in the day disclose a detailed list of banks slated to be involved in the takeover plan.
But when the evening arrived, a low-ranking ministry official was dispatched to offer the media a four-word statement: "The matter is confidential."
The government often chooses to delay the announcement of sensitive financial issues until late on a Friday to minimize the market's reaction. More details on the takeovers -- in particular, which healthy banks will be assigned to which sickly cooperatives -- could come today.
Earlier this month, the credit cooperatives of 36 farmers' and fishermen's associations were put under the supervisory control of the Central Depository Insurance Co.
The management of 14 of those institutions was replaced with officials from the financial reconstruction fund, Taiwan's version of the Resolution Trust Corp in the US.
This first step involved the auditing of records and operations of these institutions by financial examiners.
The ministry is now getting closer to ascertaining the exact losses these institutions have accumulated over the past few decades.
After financial examiners present their final report on the extent of the losses, the financial reconstruction fund will take responsibility for the cooperatives' bad loans.
As for the commercial operations left standing after the bad loans are cleared, the healthy commercial banks would take over the cooperatives' operations and convert the institutions into branches.
The takeover procedure will likely start within the next few weeks.
One news report yesterday said that the Sungshan Farmers' Association (松山農會) will turn over management control to the United World Chinese Commercial Bank (世華銀行) during a formal ceremony today.
Other healthy banks involved in the takeovers are the Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行), the Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫), First Commercial Bank (第一銀行), Changhua Commercial Bank (彰化銀行), Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行), the Farmers Bank of China (農民銀行), Makoto Bank (誠泰銀行) and Sunny Commercial Bank (陽信商銀).
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