Chunghwa Post Co (中華郵政) yesterday said that it lost approximately NT$700 million (US$22.03 million) after Mega International Commercial Bank’s (兆豐銀行) stock price tumbled 6.3 percent on Monday following reports the bank was ordered to pay a huge fine for breaching US money-laundering laws.
Chunghwa Post has a 3.5 percent stake in the bank and is one of its major investors. Mega was estimated to have lost NT$20 billion after Monday’s stock price fall.
Chunghwa Post chairman Philip Ong (翁文祺) said that the fine highlights the importance of complying with foreign regulations, while failure to do so can often bring added costs.
The fine should serve as a wake-up call to the Taiwanese banking system, Ong said.
In other news, Ong said Chunghwa Post is to erect two buildings on a plot of land behind the Taipei Beimen Post Office, close to Taipei Railway Station.
The two buildings, which are to have 50 floors and 30 floors respectively, are to become landmarks at the main thoroughfare to the west of Taipei, he said.
Ong said that the project was inspired by a visit to Tokyo in 2013, when he saw the JP Tower, which is right behind the historic Tokyo Central Post Office.
Like the Tokyo post office, the Beimen post office — built in 1930 and Taipei’s oldest — is historic, Ong said, adding that there is 13,223m2 of unused land behind it.
Ong said that the Beimen post office is in a historic district that includes the city’s old North Gate.
As such, Chunghwa Post is working with the Taipei City Government to deliver a zoning plan to allow construction of the new buildings, Ong added.
Based on a preliminary proposal, Chunghwa Post will keep the Beimen post office building and turn it into a postal museum. The smaller new building will house a hotel, as well as a campus for National Chiao Tung University, which has partial ownership over the land. The taller building is to house start-ups for innovative products and services, as well as a shopping center.
The company said that investment in the project could top NT$27 billion, which would be the postal company’s largest investment in recent years.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS