The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday approved Mega Financial Holding Co's (兆豐金控) investment plan of buying Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀) shares in cash within the next year. The state-controlled financial service provider announced last Friday that it intended to buy a 26 percent stake in Taiwan Business Bank for NT$10 billion, or no more than NT$9 per share.
"We have approved the investment plan. Mega Financial can acquire Taiwan Business Bank's shares in a variety of ways, including in the open market, through tender offer or from shareholders," a commission spokesman, Lin Chung-cheng (林忠正), told reporters yesterday.
Through the proposed investment, Mega Financial, the nation's second-largest financial group by assets, is expected to benefit from better economies of scale in light of Taiwan Business Bank' significant number of branches nationwide, and the small and medium-clients lineups that is complementary to the fin-ancial group's existing banking units, Lin said.
Whether or not Mega Financial can complete its investment plan is another story, Lin said, adding that the granted period can be extended if they lodge application with convincing reasons.
Taiwan Ratings Corp (
Taiwan Ratings said it will maintain a "stable" outlook on Mega Financial and may revise its "stable" outlook on Taiwan Business to "positive" if Mega demonstrates strong commitment to the merger and the transaction proceeds smoothly to reflect support from the strong Mega group.
The impact of the proposed acquisition on Mega Financial is limited at this stage, as the cost is equivalent to about 5 percent of the company's long-term investments or shareholders' equity as of the end of September this year, Taiwan Ratings said.
Over the medium term, Mega Financial's risk profile would be pressured if it were to fully acquire the debt-ridden bank. Taiwan Ratings will pay close attention to the method it selects to finance the deal, as overly aggressive
financing could impact the financial group's credit profile, the ratings service firm warned.
Being bearish about the deal, BNP Paribas Securities (Taiwan) Co expected the proposed acquisition to fail because of legislative objection, the securities house said on Monday.
Shares of Mega Financial dropped NT$0.55, or 2.27 percent, to NT$21.55 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. BNP Paribas downgraded Mega Financial shares to “hold” with a downward revised target price of NT$21.2.
Plans to privatize Taiwan Business Bank were scrapped in September after workers protested against possible job losses. The lender's shares were unchanged at NT$8.59 yesterday.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts