The Bank of Overseas Chinese (
The bank's shares soared 6.4 percent before closing up 3.7 percent to NT$11.30 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
"We are still in talks. The interested foreign buyer has finished its due diligence but has not made an offer yet," Bank of Overseas Chinese spokesman Weng Chien (
The bank hopes to complete the deal as soon as possible, Weng said.
He refused to name of the potential foreign investor, citing confidentiality, and declined to comment on whether the negotiations that have lasted for three months could be completed by the end of the year.
Both Dow Jones Newswires and the Chinese-language Com-mercial Times reported yesterday, citing people close to the deal, that Polaris Financial Group (寶來金融集團) has agreed to sell its holding in the bank to Citigroup for NT$14.15 billion (US$436 million) to NT$14.19 billion.
Polaris controls 40 percent of Bank of Overseas Chinese, which operates 55 branches nationwide.
The two parties would seal the deal within the next two weeks, the reports said.
In response, the bank said it has clarified its stance with the financial regulator in the wake of the news reports. The Financial Supervisory Commission said it has not received any takeover application concerning the reported deal.
The reported offer is lower than previous speculation of a NT$12 to NT$13 per share offer after factoring in compensation cost paid to the bank's employees.
Employees' compensation is estimated at NT$2.64 billion, Weng said. The bank said it would pay out NT$700 million from its reserves, while the buyer would shoulder the remainder, he added.
The potential deal has been delayed owing to strong opposition from the labor union, which has threatened to call a strike on Dec. 29 if the bank refused to sign a group agreement for employees' job protection by yesterday.
"The union is no longer a problem," Weng said, adding that more than 90 percent of some 2,200 employees have agreed to the terms of compensation and abandoned the idea of inking a group agreement.
"There will be no strike, guar-anteed," he said.
However, the bank's management seemed overly optimistic, as the union said the strike plan was on track, adding that the staff was forced to accept the compensation terms under the threat of layoff.
"We will still do it [the strike] as scheduled as the management has refused to negotiate," Bank of Overseas Chinese Industrial Union acting president Chen Hui-chih (
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the