While many local banks have begun focusing on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues this year due to a regulator’s demands, HSBC Bank (Taiwan) Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) has already outpaced its peers, as it has been funding wetlands conservation for 17 years.
The bank has been supporting Guandu Nature Park (關渡自然公園), which aims to restore wetlands and protect wild birds, since 2003, not only with cumulative funds of NT$160 million (US$5.55 million at the current exchange rate), but also with its personnel’s volunteer work of 31,050 hours, HSBC Taiwan chief executive officer Adam Chen (陳志堅) said in an interview yesterday.
“It is not often seen that a private bank devotes its resources to support a conservation park for such a long time, but we feel that it is right to protect the park, or the lungs of Taipei, given our Taipei-based business,” Chen said.
Photo courtesy of HSBC Bank (Taiwan) Ltd
Seventeen years ago few talked about ESG, a keyword that has become hot in the nation’s financial industry this year due to the Financial Supervisory Commission’s plans to boost sustainable financing and carry out an ESG assessment of financial firms, he said.
“I think we are even ahead of the regulations. As our headquarters have been concentrating on sustainability for many years, we make it our core value in business,” Chen said.
HSBC Taiwan has sought local non-profit organizations to work with on environmental projects, as some institutions its headquarters collaborates with, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature or Earthwatch, do not have branches in Taiwan, bank corporate sustainability head Ruth Lee (李清如) said.
Thanks to the efforts of the Wild Bird Society of Taipei, which has been assigned by the Taipei City Government to manage the Guandu Nature Park, and the support of HSBC Taiwan, the number of bird species in the park has increased 78 percent to 133, Lee said.
The park also plays an important role in bird migration, as millions of birds have visited the park during their migration, she said.
Supporting the park has not only had a positive effect on the environment, but also on society, as the bird society and the bank hold environmental education activities to help students understand their environment and learn to cherish natural resources, Lee said.
The bank has since 2009 also sponsored the park to use six water buffaloes to help restore the wetlands and maintain the ecosystem, she added.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
REACTIONS: While most analysts were positive about TSMC’s investment, one said the US expansion could disrupt the company’s supply-demand balance Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) new US$100 billion investment in the US would exert a positive effect on the chipmaker’s revenue in the medium term on the back of booming artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from US chip designers, an International Data Corp (IDC) analyst said yesterday. “This is good for TSMC in terms of business expansion, as its major clients for advanced chips are US chip designers,” IDC senior semiconductor research manager Galen Zeng (曾冠瑋) said by telephone yesterday. “Besides, those US companies all consider supply chain resilience a business imperative,” Zeng said. That meant local supply would
BIG INVESTMENT: Hon Hai is building the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art AI chips, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said The construction of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) massive artificial intelligence (AI) server plant near Guadalajara, Mexico, would be completed in a year despite the threat of new tariffs from US President Donald Trump, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), is investing about US$900 million in what would become the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art GB200 AI chips, Lemus said. The project consists of two phases: the expansion of an existing Hon Hai facility in the municipality of El Salto, and the construction of a
RSS