Citibank Taiwan Ltd (台灣花旗) expects to see robust earnings this year on across-the-board growth in core businesses amid economic recovery at home and abroad, top executives said yesterday.
The US-headquartered lender reported a pre-tax income of NT$18 billion (US$609.7 million) last year, rising 12.5 percent from NT$16 billion in 2009, as recovering -confidence boosted consumer and corporate lending.
“We expect total credit card charges to increase 10 percent this year” after they hit a new high last year, ranking second after Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中信銀), Citibank Taiwan chairman Victor Kuan (管國霖) said.
Chinatrust bank is the nation’s largest credit-card issuer and the banking arm of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控).
Citibank will seek to strengthen cooperation with hotels, airlines and restaurants because Taiwanese are expected to spend more on dinning and travel this year, Kuan said.
Last year, the number of foreign-bound travelers increased 15.6 percent from the previous year, while credit card charges increased 12.7 percent, according to data compiled by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
Taiwan’s private consumption is forecast to grow 3.85 percent year-on-year from NT$7.89 trillion last year to NT$8.33 trillion this year, the agency said last week.
Citi Taiwan expects to see stable growth of about 10 percent in mortgage loans, targeting all salaried home buyers this year, Kuan said.
Corporate loans to small and medium-sized firms, which expanded more than 30 percent last year, is expected to grow another 30 percent this year, Kuan said.
Simon Chung (鍾國強), head of commercial banking at Citi Taiwan, expects strong loan demand from companies in the technology and traditional sectors to expand amid stable economic pickup globally.
Chung’s department added 50 staffers last year and plans to hire more this year to tap into business opportunities linked to the warming trade links between Taiwan and China following the inking of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement last year.
“We will soon organize road shows in the US, briefing firms about business opportunities in Taiwan and Greater China,” Chung said. “More than 130 companies expressed interest on the day we announced the event.”
Chung expects this and other campaigns to boost the bank’s market share in corporate lending by 0.5 percent this year, from the current 1 percent.
Aware of increasing volatility in the foreign exchange market, Citi Taiwan recently extended its order-watch service to individual customers who can conduct major foreign currency transactions by telephone and on-site from 9am until 8pm to better hedge against losses, since it allows the desired transaction to be executed when the specified exchange rate is achieved, retail banking director Yunny Lee (李芸) said.
Other lenders provide such a service exclusively to companies and even then offer it only until 3:30pm each trading day, she said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”