Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) yesterday said it would recognize an investment loss of NT$8.8 billion (US$298.1 million) in Indonesia’s Bank Mayapada Internasional Tbk PT due to concerns about the lender’s operations amid a corporate scandal.
The company said it would revise its earnings result for June, from a net profit of NT$6.52 billion to a net loss of NT$520 million, its first monthly loss over the past 17 months.
After booking an investment loss of NT$5.2 billion in Bank Mayapada earlier this year, Cathay Life has so far recognized total investment losses of NT$14 billion in the lender, executive vice president Lin Chao-ting (林昭廷) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Wu Chi-lun, Taipei Times
Cathy Life has invested NT$13.3 billion in Bank Mayapada since 2015 and recognized a net profit of NT$700 million over the past five years.
However, the recognized investment loss of NT$8.8 billion has completely written off its investment in the Indonesian lender, Lin said.
The company conducted due diligence of Bank Mayapada at the end of last month, discovering that the lender’s non-performing loan ratio stood at 6.94 percent, higher than the industry average of below 3 percent, although it still made a profit of 143.6 billion rupiah (US$9.73 million) for the first half of this year, Lin said.
Benny Tjokrosaputro, one of the lender’s debtors, was in January named a suspect in a bribery case involving PT Asuransi Jiwasraya, which had also triggered a run on the bank, he said.
Despite its losses of NT$14 billion in the lender, Cathay Life is still considering whether to raise its stake in the lender from 37.33 percent to 51 percent, Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) president Lee Chang-ken (李長庚) said.
“We are still talking with the Indonesian government and the bank’s controlling shareholder Tahir family about many issues, including how to handle the loans offered to Benny Tjokrosaputro,” Lee said.
“Based on our investment in Vietnam and Cambodia, we believe that if we have controlling power over the investment entity, the returns would be solid. So we are still evaluating if we should be a controlling shareholder in Bank Mayapada,” Lee said.
The insurer might reach a conclusion in three months, he added.
Cathay Life yesterday reported net profit of NT$12.2 billion for last month, the highest for a single month, due to advancing payment of cash dividends, while its cumulative profit for the first seven months rose 29 percent year-on-year to NT$31.5 billion, Lin said.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS