General Electric Co's property arm, which has more than US$62 billion in assets worldwide, plans to invest US$300 million in Taiwan in the next two years as the company diversifies its Asian portfolio.
Taiwan's property market has become attractive relative to Tokyo, where rising office prices have reduced return on investment, said Tomoyuki Yoshida, head of Japan real estate operations for GE Real Estate Corp. The nation's low borrowing costs are also a plus.
"Japan is too stable," Yoshida said in an interview with Bloomberg news. "Hong Kong's market is a little too hot. Taiwan is one of the best countries to enter in Asia. You can enjoy arbitrage."
Grade A office space in Tokyo's central business districts offers a return on investment of 3.1 percent, while similar buildings in Taipei yield as much as 5.9 percent, according to a report by Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.
GE Real Estate's Japan office, which also oversees investment in Macau and Hong Kong, bought its first property in Taiwan on Nov. 30. It paid NT$684 million (US$21 million) for a 12-story office building in Taipei from Hocheng Group Corp, a bathroom and kitchen equipment manufacture.
GE Real Estate will initially focus on office and retail properties, Yoshida said, with posssible condominium development.
The value of office buildings in Taipei gained 20 percent in the past year as acquisitions by investors drove up prices, according to DTZ Debenham Tie Leung, a property consulting company.
Grade A office sites are buildings no older than 25 years with total leasable floor area of more than 10,000m2 and more than 800m2 per floor, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing service provider, yesterday said it would boost equipment capital expenditure by up to 16 percent for this year to cope with strong customer demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Aside from AI, a growing demand for semiconductors used in the automotive and industrial sectors is to drive ASE’s capacity next year, the Kaohsiung-based company said. “We do see the disparity between AI and other general sectors, and that pretty much aligns the scenario in the first half of this year,” ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉) told an
RSS