According to a written report from Taiwan's Ministry of Finance dated August 8, 2026, and reported by both UDN and CNA, the ministry is building an evaluation mechanism covering four dimensions — financial, business, corporate culture, and regulatory — to screen for merger targets with complementary synergies (E2, E9). The ministry's stated goal is to "seek targets with complementary synergies" through this four-part screening process, rather than pursuing mergers indiscriminately.
| Evaluation Dimension | Purpose (per Ministry of Finance) |
|---|---|
| Financial | Part of the four-dimension screening framework |
| Business | Part of the four-dimension screening framework |
| Corporate culture | Part of the four-dimension screening framework |
| Regulatory | Part of the four-dimension screening framework |
The Ministry of Finance's report identifies three specific structural weaknesses at state-run banks. First, earnings structures have long leaned heavily on interest income from corporate loans and mortgages, which the ministry says has left "innovation speed insufficient" (E6). Second, the ministry points to an aging management layer combined with attrition among younger staff, creating what it calls an "imbalanced workforce structure" — senior and mid-level executives skew older while young bank employees are leaving (E7). Third, the ministry notes that lending activity is concentrated in policy-oriented loans and corporate credit, which affects capital adequacy; it adds that return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) at these banks trail the industry average, limiting their ability to replenish capital through retained earnings and constraining business expansion (E8).
The ministry's report states that the six publicly held, privately operated banks under its jurisdiction lack complementary business synergies, making resource integration difficult; as a result, the ministry assesses that the benefits of merging these banks with one another would be limited (E4, E10). CNA's report frames this alongside the ministry's separate comments on Bank of Taiwan, Land Bank, and the Export-Import Bank of Taiwan, noting that all of these entities retain distinct policy functions and that resource-integration difficulty is high across the six banks the ministry oversees (E10).
The ministry's report frames a public-bank-led approach to "public-private mergers" as a more workable path forward. Under this premise, the ministry states, personnel and branch-location adjustments would be "relatively simple," and pushback from labor unions would be "relatively smaller" than under alternative merger structures (E5). The same written report describes a public-led premise as a direction worth considering specifically for the purpose of raising the competitiveness of state-run banks (E1).
On the question of consolidating Bank of Taiwan, Land Bank, and the Export-Import Bank of Taiwan, the ministry's position, as reported by UDN, is that each institution "has its own distinct policy function" and that there is currently "no integration plan" for combining them (E3).
CNA reports that the Ministry of Finance emphasized any push toward consolidation should be built on a principle of mutual consent to reach agreement among parties, fully safeguard the rights of shareholders, employees, and customers, and thereby reduce market impact and the difficulty of integration (E11). The CNA dispatch carrying these remarks was filed by reporter Lu Yen-tzu in Taipei and edited by Lin Shu-yuan (E12).
Taken together, the ministry's own diagnosis and its proposed remedy point in the same direction rather than in tension: the competitiveness problems it cites — earnings tilted toward traditional lending, an aging management bench, and below-average ROA/ROE (E6, E7, E8) — are framed as reasons to pursue mergers, while its assessment that the six public-private banks under its purview lack complementary synergies (E4, E10) is used to explain why "public-public" combinations are deprioritized in favor of a public-led "public-private" model, which it argues carries lower union and personnel friction (E5). At the same time, the ministry keeps Bank of Taiwan, Land Bank, and the Export-Import Bank outside this discussion entirely, citing their distinct policy functions and confirming no integration plan exists for them (E3) — a boundary that, combined with the mutual-consent principle it says will govern any consolidation (E11), narrows the immediate scope of the four-dimension framework to the public-private merger track rather than a broader restructuring of the public banking sector.
No. The ministry states each has its own distinct policy function and there is currently no integration plan involving these three institutions.
The ministry says these six banks lack complementary business synergies, making resource integration difficult, and it assesses the benefit of merging them with one another as limited.
The ministry says integration should follow a mutual-consent principle to build agreement, while fully protecting the rights of shareholders, employees, and customers to reduce market impact and integration difficulty.
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