The Ministry of Finance yesterday said that Lai Kuo-chou (
The ministry submitted its position to the Government Information Office (GIO), which manages the government-owned terrestrial TV station, after the state-run Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) completed its evaluation report on Lai, Deputy Minister of Finance Liu Teng-cheng (劉燈城) said.
Lai, son-in-law of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), is Land Bank's legal representative at TTV, which is 47 percent controlled by six state-run banks.
As the firm's chairman who represents public shareholders, Lai has applied to the National Communications Commission to purchase 4.8 percent of the shares owned by three Japanese corporate shareholders, raising fears that his move could affect the fairness of the upcoming auction of public shares, Liu said.
Rumors were circulating that Lai could have purchased more than 10 percent of the company's holdings.
"Lai crossed the line between public and private roles. His share purchase could affect potential investors' bidding willingness and bidding prices," Liu said.
Whether Lai is replaced and who might take his position will be decided by the GIO, he said.
Liu said that Lai had proclaimed his innocence on the telephone earlier yesterday, saying newspaper reports had exaggerated his shareholding.
Lai also said that he will not cooperate with any firm interested in the bidding and he would not submit tenders, Liu said.
Local Chinese-language reports said that ERA TV (年代電視), Unique Satellite TV (非凡電視), the Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times), Dafeng TV Ltd (大豐電視) and Want Want Group (旺旺集團) were among the challengers.
The government has set up a two-stage plan to offload its shares in TTV. In the first stage, the government plans to sell 25.7 percent, via public auctions, of shareholding owned by First Commercial Bank (
In the second stage, it will release the remaining state-owned shares of 21.6 percent controlled by the Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) and Land Bank to the public.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained