Taiwan News
Date: 2015-10-10
By: Tien Yu-pin and Frances Huang, Central News Agency
Taipei, Oct. 10 (CNA) Taiwan Ratings Corp. has raised its credit ratings for First Financial Holding Co., saying the financial holding firm’s capitalization has improved after a recent rights issue.
Taiwan Ratings, a local partner of U.S.-based Standard & Poor’s, said that after taking First Financial’s stronger capital position into account, it upgraded the financial institution’s outlook to “stable” and lifted its long-term credit rating higher to “twAA-” from “twA+.” The ratings agency also raised the long-term credit rating for First Commercial Bank, the main banking unit of First Financial, to “twAA+” from “twAA” and the bank’s outlook to “stable.”
First Financial “completed a fundraising drive through a rights issue in September and injected NT$20 billion (US$608 million) into First Commercial Bank to strengthen the bank’s capitalization and support its overseas growth,” Taiwan Ratings said. Last month, First Financial issued 1.6 billion new shares at NT$14.2 each to raise a total of NT$23.52 billion. First Financial said it injected NT$20 billion into First Commercial Bank to raise the bank’s capital adequacy ratio (CAR). [FULL STORY]
