The five-star Lai Lai Sheraton Hotel (來來飯店), one of Taipei's best- known downtown landmarks, will soon be in new hands.
An official at the Tourism Bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday confirmed that Tsai Chen-yang (
"After reviewing its new management proposal and financial portfolio, the bureau will give its approval for the transfer of managerial rights to Tsai's group within the next two days," said the official, who requested anonymity.
The official added that, before long, Tsai's group will be fully authorized to run the hotel after obtaining a new business license from the economics ministry.
Ironically, Tsai's elder brother, Tsai Chen-nan (
Tsai Chen-yang, then vice chairman of Lai Lai Department Store, quit his post and later started an antique and restaurant business.
However, Tsai's family business group -- the Cathay Life Insurance Co (
Lai Lai is expected to officially make the hand-over announcement early next week, general manager Josef Dolp said yesterday.
But Dolp claimed no knowledge that the takeover deal will cost Tsai somewhere between NT$ 600 million to NT$700 million as the media reported.
Yesterday Dolp claimed that the hotel's daily operations will not be affected by the management change.
He also assured the hotel's 1,050 staff that there will be no layoffs and the hotel will undergo a facelift after the new management team comes in.
"Our staff already understood that the first intention of our chairman was to provide them with a future. And this will happen no matter who will be the new owner. The future is provided for in the long term," Dolp said.
Local media speculated that Chang's Hong Shee Group currently suffers from a severe cash crunch since the hotel lost more than NT$100 million in revenues last year and owed landlord Cathay Life over NT$250 million in rentals.
Shrugging off media speculation, Dolp only cited Chang as raising concern over the rising rent.
"The rent for the property is very high. It was over 30 percent of our total revenues," Dolp said, adding that worldwide average rental should range between 17 to 22 percent of revenue.
In response, Lee Chang-ken (
Lee said that Cathay Life looks at a stable rental income and will welcome any new owner who is competent and has a good image.
When asked if the rent will be lowered for Tsai, Lee did not give a clear answer but said a new lease may be re-signed pending on the negotiated deal between Chang and Tsai.
The current lease will end in 2005.
Claiming its over-due rental payments, Cathay Life won a lawsuit against Chang last December. Cathay Life could have claimed Hong Shee was bankrupt after winning the trial, but both has reached a settlement in mid February according to Lee.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS