The fate of debt-ridden Chung Shing Bank (
"The pricing discrepancy [between bidders and the government] was too big to close the deal," Vice Minister of Finance Susan Chang (
Chang refused to reveal bid amounts or say what the ministry's floor price was.
Yesterday's tender was the second attempt to sell off the bank, which first went on the auction block in January.
The Land Bank of Taiwan (土銀) and Cerberus Asia Ltd -- a US-based asset management company -- participated in yesterday's auction.
But Cerberus' managing director Jaideep Krishna and Land Bank Chairman Wei Chi-lin (
A major sticking point is how much the government should pay the successful bidder to take over the bank, which is holding a portfolio in which 57.24 percent of the loans are thought to be bad.
According to Chang, the government's Financial Restructuring Fund (金融重建基金) set a base price before accepting bids yesterday. Auction organizer Central Deposit Insurance Corp (中央存保) was authorized to close the deal within 10 percent of the base price.
"Naturally, all I can say is that the price discrepancy was greater than 10 percent," Chang said.
She also refused reveal to details of several independent assessments of Chung Shing's financial portfolio, saying only that "the bank was further in the red after its March assessment."
The finance ministry's March assessment found that the bank was in the hole by NT$29.8 billion and was likely to cost the government more than that amount when sold off.
Lee Yung-san (
Market analysts have put the figure at NT$60 billion, which is all that is left in the Financial Restructuring Fund.
After yesterday's bidding process failed, Chang said the fund plans to change conditions of the sale to make it more attractive to buyers. She said Chung Shing's impaired assets and non-performing collateral will be negotiated separately.
"The condition is that the government will be entitled to share in the gains or shoulder part of losses with the actual return of these non-performing collateral later on within a certain period of time, say, three to five years," Chang said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained