State-owned Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) is poised to outperform its China-bound Taiwanese peers by injecting between 400 million yuan (US$58.69 million) and 600 million yuan into upgrading its Shanghai-based representative office after regulators across the Taiwan Strait finalize market access terms, a bank executive said yesterday.
That will far exceed the minimum capital requirement — 200 million yuan — which Chinese authorities currently impose on any foreign banks that open branches in the country, chairman Wang Yao-shing (王耀興) told a media briefing yesterday.
“Our [initial China-bound] investment won’t lag behind our [Taiwanese] peers,” he said.
Wang said the bank didn’t rule out the possibility of adding capital if its Taiwanese rivals also beef up their China-bound investments, or seeking city bank-level strategic partners in China.
He also said the bank would turn a profit in Shanghai after the second year since the regulator there would only allow foreign banks — which must stay in the red for two of their first three years in-country — to operate Chinese yuan-denominated businesses. Wang said the bank was mulling the possibility of launching its second China-based branch in Qingdao, Shandong Province, where many Taiwanese businesses have also made investments, should the weather pose no difficulty to employees.
“We will facilitate a greater China platform to serve Taiwanese businesses, linking our China-based outlets, offshore units and branches in Hong Kong and Singapore,” he said.
Land Bank yesterday posted NT$8.17 billion (NT$254.56 million) in net income for last year, up 8.4 percent year-on-year, or NT$3.25 per share.
Wang said the bank vowed to maintain its earnings per share at above NT$1.5 for this year after its working capital was doubled to NT$50 billion earlier.
The bank yesterday touted its robust performance in syndicated loan businesses after it arranged US$2.5 billion in outstanding syndicated loans to Taiwanese businesses last year — the largest in Taiwan.
In Asia, the bank also arranged US$2.35 billion in outstanding syndicated loans — the 10th largest after Standard Chartered Bank and RBS.
At the end of November, the bank claimed to be the largest domestic mortgage lender with NT$635.4 billion in outstanding loans, or an 11.17 percent market share, Wang said.
“We don’t think there are bubbles in the domestic real-estate market because only high-end properties have seen price hikes,” he said, adding that his bank expects to see steady growth in mortgage lending.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary