The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC, 匯豐銀行) yesterday launched three commercial banking centers in Taipei and Kaohsiung, targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
“We are targeting SMEs that operate in international trade,” Kenneth Cheng (鄭克家), head of HSBC’s commercial banking in Taiwan, told reporters yesterday.
Citing an internal survey, Cheng said that more than 30 percent of domestic SMEs have overseas branches, while 60 percent trade internationally, which would provide a clientele base.
The bank hopes to attract business with its strengths in trade finance, factoring services, credit insurance, currency hedging and cash management to provide financial solutions tailored to SMEs in the manufacturing sector.
Russel Liu (劉政瑩), head of the bank’s SME commercial banking division, said HSBC would open 10 outlets nationwide to serve SME clients with a staff of 90 bankers, most of whom were formerly employed by The Chinese Bank (中華銀行), which HSBC acquired in 2007.
Arjuna Mahendran, head of HSBC’s private bank investment strategy in Asia, said he was optimistic that the global economy would bottom out by the end of the year, although more bad news would come and the pace of recovery might not be as fast as expected.
However, many US companies have under-borrowed in recent years and are sitting on relatively big piles of cash to invest and hire staff, while many sovereign wealth funds are poised to invest, he said.
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet (EUV) pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), is aiming to expand revenue to NT$10 billion (US$304.8 million) this year, as it expects the artificial intelligence (AI) boom to drive demand for wafer delivery pods and pods used in advanced packaging technology. That suggests the firm’s revenue could grow as much as 53 percent this year, after it posted a 28.91 percent increase to NT$6.55 billion last year, exceeding its 20 percent growth target. “We usually set an aggressive target internally to drive further growth. This year, our target is to
The TAIEX ended the Year of the Dragon yesterday up about 30 percent, led by contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). The benchmark index closed up 225.40 points, or 0.97 percent, at 23,525.41 on the last trading session of the Year of the Dragon before the Lunar New Year holiday ushers in the Year of the Snake. During the Year of the Dragon, the TAIEX rose 5,429.34 points, the highest ever, while the 30 percent increase in the year was the second-highest behind only a 30.84 percent gain in the Year of the Rat from Jan. 25, 2020, to Feb.
Cryptocurrencies gave a lukewarm reception to US President Donald Trump’s first policy moves on digital assets, notching small gains after he commissioned a report on regulation and a crypto reserve. Bitcoin has been broadly steady since Trump took office on Monday and was trading at about US$105,000 yesterday as some of the euphoria around a hoped-for revolution in cryptocurrency regulation ebbed. Smaller cryptocurrency ether has likewise had a fairly steady week, although was up 5 percent in the Asia day to US$3,420. Bitcoin had been one of the most spectacular “Trump trades” in financial markets, gaining 50 percent to break above US$100,000 and
RSS