The increase, chiefly for its wealth management unit and supporting staff, will bring Standard Chartered’s number of employees in Taiwan to 6,000, the bank’s Taiwan President Jim F. McCabe said at a briefing in Taipei yesterday.

“Organic growth still drives the business,” McCabe said. The bank has a “good footing” to deliver double-digit returns on its investment and earnings-per-share in Taiwan this year and will focus on consumer banking, he said.

Citigroup Inc., UBS AG, Merrill Lynch & Co. and other foreign banks are competing to serve Taiwan’s richest people, the wealthiest in Asia outside China and Japan. The island had 210,000 people at home and abroad with at least $1 million in net assets in 2005, controlling about US$585 billion, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

London-based Standard Chartered purchased Hsinchu International Bank for US$1.2 billion in 2006. It added 83 branches to its existing three on the island to expand wealth management services while gaining access to Hsinchu’s list of clients, who may need bank services in China to support operations there.

The Taiwanese across the 180-kilometer strait are beyond the reach of the island’s banks, which aren’t allowed to open branches in China because the two sides haven’t agreed on a two- way regulatory arrangement. Clients abroad often must turn to Chinese banks for wealth-management advice or loans.

Taiwan’s companies and individuals are the biggest investors in China, having poured US$150 billion into the country.

Standard Chartered said last week its second-half profit increased 23 percent as lending in Asia and the Middle East resisted a U.S. slowdown.

The bank has made good progress since completing the merger with Hsinchu Bank in July, McCabe said. Hsinchu Bank contributed a pretax profit of US$42 million in the second half of last year, compared with US$7 million in the first half, he said.

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