The buyers of Asia Trust and Investment Corp (亞洲信託), which was taken over by the nation’s financial regulator in January, inked deals with the government yesterday.
Sunil Kaushal, president and chief executive of Standard Chartered Bank in Taiwan, which took control of the troubled lender in return for NT$3.348 billion (US$104 million) from the government, said the acquisition made the UK bank the largest foreign presence in the nation’s banking market.
“The deal is a demonstration of our commitment to Taiwan, located in a strategically important place in north Asia,” Kaushal said. “We look to pursue greater prosperity after the acquisition.”
Chu Ping-yu (朱炳昱), chairman of Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽), which acquired Asia Trust’s Taipei headquarters for NT$3.03 billion, said the building was a bargain and it would be turned into the insurer’s operations center in northern Taiwan.
Chu said his company first sought to buy the building last year, but had balked at a price that was around NT$3.7 billion to NT$3.8 billion.
Chu also expressed interest in buying the real estate properties of ChinFon Commercial Bank (慶豐銀行), also taken over by the financial regulator last month and which will be auctioned off later this year.
Revival Asset Management Corp (力興資產), a subsidiary of Taiwan Asset Management Corp (台灣金聯資產公司), bought Asia Trust’s impaired assets for NT$707 million.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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
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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