Waterland Financial Holdings Co (
The financial services provider is slated to select a new board of directors and superintendents at a shareholders meeting on June 29.
The current management, led by chairman Walter Lin (
The rebel shareholders include the Miramar Group (
State-run banks, including Taiwan Cooperative Bank (
"We believe our board of directors and management team can help continue the company's bright performance and sustainable development," Waterland Financial president Harvey Liu (
In a bid to solicit more proxy votes for the current management team, Waterland Financial yesterday revealed its first-quarter earnings. The firm reported after-tax net income of NT$960 million, or NT$0.45 per share, in the January-March quarter, up 29.8 percent from a year ago. For last year, the company reported earnings of NT$3.25 billion, or NT$1.54 per share, with a cash dividend of NT$1.4 per share.
The Chinese-language news media have recently speculated that rebel shareholders may have accumulated up to a 40 percent stake and are likely to support Hung San-hsiung (
Another player, Nice Group (耐斯), has held more than 10 percent of the company for over a year, and as a result is qualified to request shareholders proxy votes. Nice, which has been non-committal on the issue, said it expects to control over 25 percent of votes, according to Chinese-language reports.
Liu declined to confirm if Lin has approached Nice for support.
Liu said the company hopes that the state-run banks holding its shares and the Ministry of Finance will be able to make the best management choice for shareholders.
In response, Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (林全) declined Waterland's request, saying that the government would not get involved in complicated management struggles in private financial institutions.
"[The ministry] will leave the issue for [Waterland's] state-run bank shareholders to make their own decision," Lin said.
He said the ministry could, however, provide a similar service to that it had provided for private shareholders of Fuhwa Financial Holdings Co (復華金控).
Last month, the ministry helped mediate an agreement between the government, Yuanta Group (元大集團) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which controls Fuhwa Financial.
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