The world's highest skyscraper, Taipei 101, yesterday welcomed the Bayer Group as its first tenant and is preparing for its second tenant, Swiss insurer Winter Life, to move in later this month.
Bayer, which is Germany's second-largest chemical and drug maker, will locate its Taiwan headquarters on the tower building's 53rd and 54th floors. The new office space accommodates about 230 of Bayer Taiwan's employees.
"We like this building very much, and believe it is the safest place to work, with the high-tech infrastructure and design," said Elmar Stachels, chief executive officer of Bayer's Greater China region, during the moving-in ceremony yesterday.
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
With a five-year lease, Bayer believes the move will help it attract domestic and international businesses, as well as bolster its business in Taiwan, Stachels said.
Future tenants
Winter Life will relocate its Taiwan branch to Taipei 101 next Monday, said Harace Lin (
Other future tenants include Peoples' King International Co, D.B. Zwirn Advisors Taiwan and the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TSE). The TSE is currently the largest tenant, holding the 9th to the 12th floors. It will move in by year's end.
Now that the first tenant has commenced operations in the building, more potential customers waiting on the sidelines will be more interested in exploring leasing options, said Calvin Wang (王治平), managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle International Property Consultants, the leading leasing agent for the skyscraper.
Currently, the occupancy rate at Taipei 101 is still about 35 percent for the 58,000-ping office space, but Wang is confident that the building will be 60 percent to 70 percent full by the end of the year, and next to full by the end of next year.
"Many companies have shown strong interest in making Taipei 101 their address these days, [giving it] prestige like the Empire State Building in New York City," Wang said.
As for the safety concerns of some prospective tenants following several accidents during the tower's construction, Wang said doubts had been dissolved now that the building had withstood several major earthquakes. As a result, current tenants were more interested in renting higher levels of the building.
Strict controls on access would also give confidence to customers, Wang said.
Floor pass
Taipei 101 utilizes the Visitor Access Kiosk System developed by Siemens AG, which enables visitors to key in the floor or company they want to visit.
With confirmation by the tenant, the visitor receives a pass allowing entry through a security door.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS