News

Banking ties with China may boost Taiwan's banks this year amid an overcrowded home market and a global economic environment that could reduce their profits.

Foreign banks, long prohibited from opening branches in Thailand, will find this strangling state of affairs somewhat easing in 2013.

The Reserve Bank of India rejected proposals by several banks to launch wholly-owned subsidiaries.

Hua Nan Financial is seeking a 20 percent stake in Fujian Haixia Bank, in what would be the first direct banking investment between Taiwan and China.

Local government debts in China are being reclassified as general corporate loans to ease banks’ provisioning requirements for potential bad loans.

This year won’t be a happy one for the bottom line of South Korea’s major banks.

The lender plans to increase presence in Kunshan, where many Taiwanese investors have formed manufacturing clusters.

Part of the MOU is to further efforts to carry out personnel training to further boost business exchanges between lenders.

The first six Taiwanese lenders given license in China may soon be allowed to offer Renminbi services.

The issue became possible after an amendment to Australia’s Banking Act allowing the country’s banks to offer covered bonds.

The lender also plans to buy an investment bank in Asia.

Vietnam will develop credit card payment services with the aim of reducing the quantity of cash in circulation to 11 percent by 2015. It will also strive to increase the number of bank account holders to 35-40 percent of the population. The targets were set in a Prime Minister-approved project to accelerate non-cash payment services. To meet the targets, the banking system will diversify card payment services, with a primary focus on developing pay points. It aims to install 250,000 card payment machines to increase the number of transactions to 200 million a year by 2015.

The acquisitionof  Kim Eng Holdings and growth potential of Bank Internasional Indonesia will bring regional growth for Maybank. OSK Research said the bank's latest quarter net profit year-on-year growth of 25.1 per cent and quarter-on-quarter growth of 11.4 per cent, respectively, far outpaced the industry's aggregate of 15.6 per cent and 8.2 per cent, respectively. "Its earnings were propelled by an industry-beating loans growth of 17.6 per cent, y-o-y, the hefty 62.1 per cent drop in loans loss provision and maiden contribution from Kim Eng," OSK Research said in a note today. It said BII was also aggressively expanding via new hiring and enlarging its branch network by 43 per cent over the next one-and-a-half years. The research firm said BII's operating leverage would begin to flow through by financial year 2012 and financial year 2013 on a more stable cost base while generate new revenue from its enlarged presence. For the source of this story, click here.

Shares of China's five biggest banks lost an average 22% in 2011 on concerns that a record two-year credit boom may unravel and lead to rising bad debts.

MB Bank became the fourth Vietnamese bank operating in Cambodia and brings the total number of the kingdom's commercial banks to 31.

ICBC launch of bill pool service nationwide specially for corporate clients who demand for cash management service.