SHANGHAI - Taiwan's Fubon Financial, the island's fifth-largest financial holding firm, would be keen to take additional equity stakes in Chinese commercial banks, Chairman Daniel Tsai said.

Fubon Bank (Hong Kong), part of the Taiwan company, holds 19.99 percent of southeast China's Xiamen Commercial Bank, although Chinese regulations prohibit a single foreign institution from holding more than 20 percent of a Chinese bank.

If there is a chance, of course we will (take stakes in other banks), because our city commercial bank branch network is still small, Tsai said.

Taiwan's ties with China, which has claimed the self-ruled island as its territory since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, have warmed considerably since the election last year of President Ma Ying-jeou, who promised friendlier relations.

Taiwan, home to Asia's fourth-largest banking system, signed a broad financial services agreement with China last month that included an agreement to set up a regulatory framework for financial services firms on both sides to invest and do business in each others' markets.

(Reporting by Helen Ding and Edmund Klamann; Editing by David Fox )

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