On December 8, State-run Taiwan Business Bank established a representative office in Yangon. It is located in Botahtaung Township. The branch office would seek to gather information about local industries and cultivate relationships between Myanmar companies and Taiwnese firms.
In addition, the branch office would seek a better understanding of Myanmar economic activity, regulations and financial intelligence, so that it could provide better advice and services to Taiwanese customers when it eventually becomes a branch.
The branch opening marks the bank’s latest attempt to strengthen its operations and earnings in overseas markets. Taiwan Business Bank also has branches in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Sydney, Brisbane and Shanghai. It owns a micro loans business in Cambodia and a capital leasing company in Shanghai. The lender also plans to set up branches in China’s Wuhan, New York, Tokyo and having a presence in Southeast Asia helps to advance the nation’s attempts to join regional trade blocs.
About the bank: The forerunners of the Taiwan Business Bank were two private savings organizations, one established in Taipei in June of 1915 and the other in Tainan in July of the same year, following the traditional practice of forming cooperatives. Following the restoration of Taiwan to the Republic of China on 25th October 1945, these two organizations and two more savings cooperatives were taken over by the Taiwan Provincial Government and on 1st September 1946, were reorganized to form the Taiwan Mutual Financial Company. To cope with the liberalized and internationalized financial environment and to conform to the government’s policy of privatizing state-owned enterprises, the Taiwan Business Bank was formed as a private bank on January 22, 1998 and entered a new era of operations. The Bank’s domestic branch network covers the whole island of Taiwan.
