The nation’s financial services companies last quarter cut their combined exposure to China and Hong Kong to NT$3.515 trillion (US$115.23 billion) from NT$3.623 trillion in the second quarter due to regional economic uncertainties, a Financial Supervisory Commission official said yesterday.
Combined exposure to China at the nation’s 15 financial services firms fell 3.5 percent to NT$2.55 trillion from NT$2.64 trillion a quarter earlier, mainly because their banking unit’s call loans and deposits declined 13 percent to NT$495 billion, commission data showed.
Combined lending to China dropped 2.3 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$722 billion, while investments remained flat at NT$1.33 trillion compared with the previous quarter, data showed.
“Judging by the aggregate amount of exposure, it seemed that local financial holding companies were being more cautious and careful about their business in China in the third quarter,” a commission official surnamed Hou (侯) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
That indicated a change in their attitude toward the market, given their combined exposure to China increased from the first quarter to the second quarter, Hou said.
Combined exposure to Hong Kong fell 1.4 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$965 billion at the end of September, due to banking units’ call loans and deposits falling 5 percent to NT$58 billion, as well as a slight cutback in lending and investment, data showed.
Cathay Financial Holding Co’s (國泰金控) banking unit trimmed its lending to China as it became more conservative amid higher uncertainty, company spokesman Daniel Teng (鄧崇儀) said by telephone.
Meanwhile, Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) kept its investment in China unchanged as it only makes up a small percentage of its investments, executive vice president Lin Chao-ting (林昭廷) said.
Overall, China and Hong Kong remained local financial services companies’ second and fourth-largest markets respectively in terms of exposure, data showed.
The companies’ combined exposure to the other eight markets in the top 10 — Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, the UK and the US — grew from a quarter earlier, with exposure to South Korea reporting the biggest quarterly increase of 7.6 percent to NT$494 billion, data showed.
Combined exposure to Vietnam and Thailand advanced 11 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$197 billion and NT$128 billion respectively, as oversea banking units increased their lending in the two markets, data showed.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
RSS