Following three years of unsuccessful privatization efforts, the state-run Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp (
"Now we're devising a new version of the proposal and expect to submit it to the Ministry of Finance this month before delivering it to the Cabinet for further review," Martin Tsai (蔡木霖), the company's vice president, said on the sidelines of a press conference.
"We hope the Cabinet can give us the green light as soon as possible to facilitate our initial public offering (IPO)," Tsai said.
Taiwan Tobacco, formerly known as the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau (
According to the original plan, the company would have had to issue an IPO last month, selling 30 percent of its shares this year and another 21 percent next year, to meet privatization targets.
However, strong opposition by the company's labor union has impeded the privatization process, despite former chairman Morgan Hwang's (黃營杉) efforts during his three-year tenure. The union is lobbying lawmakers to ensure that the 7,000 employees will keep their jobs
Hwang was appointed in July by the government to take over the chairmanship of Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電), leaving the Taiwan Tobacco office to Ray Dawn (董瑞斌).
Dawn, 47, is a former director of Kaohsiung City's Bureau of Finance. After assuming the chairmanship of Taiwan Tobacco, he has requested a revaluation of the company's assets, facilities and factories, and has been pushing organizational restructuring.
As soon as the privatization proposal is approved by the Cabinet, the company will hire a financial consultant to assess its share-sale project, he said.
Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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