Central Deposit Insurance Corp (CDIC, 中央存保) yesterday sold off three out of four tranches of debt-ridden Chinfon Commercial Bank’s (慶豐商銀) bad loans to two asset management companies for around NT$576 million (US$17 million).
The sale of Chinfon’s assets, liabilities and its operations — the so-called “good bank” part of the firm — however failed to attract any bidders, CDIC president Howard Wang (王南華) told a media briefing yesterday.
Wang refused to speculate as to why the “good bank” sale attracted no bidders, but said “we will let the Financial Supervisory Commission [FSC] decide what to do with the ‘good bank’ sale of Chinfon Commercial Bank, for which no one placed bids.”
FSC officials didn’t reply to calls from the Taipei Times about future plans for Chinfon’s “good bank” sale. But Dow Jones Newswire reported yesterday that the commission would discuss a takeover of Chinfon with the Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), citing Chang Ming-Daw (張明道), head of the FSC’s banking bureau.
Wang said HC Second Asset Management Co (匯誠第二資產管理公司) acquired two tranches of bad loans, whose adjusted unpaid balance totaled NT$12.8 billion.
HC Second is a subsidiary of Huiyang Private Equity Fund Co (匯揚創投), whose president is former vice finance minister Yang Tze-kiang (楊子江).
Liang King Co (良京實業), a subsidiary of Promise Group in Japan, acquired one tranche of bad loans with NT$5.8 billion in adjusted unpaid balance for NT$200 million, Wang said.
Robin Ou (區灝), a director at Liang King, yesterday told the Taipei Times that the company believed it was a worthwhile purchase.
“Sales of all impaired assets are always profitable, although the return may differ in accordance with market sentiment and marketing strategies,” he said.
Wang said he was glad to see the result of yesterday’s bad loan sale, which generated a 3 percent return and higher than the average 1 percent return in past bad loan sales.
The auction to liquidate the bank’s remaining tranche of bad assets with an unpaid balance of NT$20.1 billion yesterday entered two rounds of price negotiation, but failed to generate any concrete outcome.
The FDIC and the bidders will continue price negotiations for the remaining tranche of bad loans today.
The latest FSC statistics showed that Chinfon had NT$13.95 billion in net losses as of January, with a 34.53 percent non-performing debt ratio, and NT$14.351 billion in bad loans.
DOLLAR CHALLENGE: BRICS countries’ growing share of global GDP threatens the US dollar’s dominance, which some member states seek to displace for world trade US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100 percent tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the US dollar. His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining. While the US dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed
LIMITED MEASURES: The proposed restrictions on Chinese chip exports are weaker than previously considered, following lobbying by major US firms, sources said US President Joe Biden’s administration is weighing additional curbs on sales of semiconductor equipment and artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips to China that would escalate the US crackdown on Beijing’s tech ambitions, but stop short of some stricter measures previously considered, said sources familiar with the matter. The restrictions could be unveiled as soon as next week, said the sources, who emphasized that the timing and contours of the rules have changed several times, and that nothing is final until they are published. The measures follow months of deliberations by US officials, negotiations with allies in Japan and the Netherlands, and
TECH COMPETITION: The US restricted sales of two dozen types of manufacturing equipment and three software tools, and blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities US President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled new restrictions on China’s access to vital components for chips and artificial intelligence (AI), escalating a campaign to contain Beijing’s technological ambitions. The US Department of Commerce slapped additional curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and chipmaking gear, including that produced by US firms at foreign facilities. It also blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities that it accused of acting on Beijing’s behalf, although it did not name them in an initial statement. Full details on the new sanctions and Entity List additions were to be published later yesterday, a US official said. The US “will
Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has retired from the company and stepped down from its board of directors just as the company is in the middle of trying to execute a turnaround plan. Intel chief financial officer David Zinsner and Intel Products CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus are serving as interim co-CEOs while the board searches for Gelsinger’s replacement, the company said in a statement. Frank Yeary, independent chair of the board of Intel, is to serve as interim executive chair, the company said. Gelsinger’s departure is hitting at a tumultuous time for the US chipmaker. Once the industry leader in
RSS