A business conglomerate comprising Nan Fung Group (南豐集團) and Chow Sang Sang Jewellery Co Ltd (周生生珠寶金行) from Hong Kong, as well as several Taiwanese companies, has offered to buy Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽), AIG’s local life insurance unit, by offering more than the current four bidders, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday.
The report, citing unnamed sources, said the group had directly contacted AIG’s top management in the US via the private equity fund Blackstone Group and suggested a closing price higher than US$1.5 billion — the highest bid made by another group led by Primus Financial Holdings Ltd.
The other three bidders are Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), whose bid is estimated at between US$1.4 billion and US$1.5 billion, followed by Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), the report said.
The fifth bidder has also stated its intention to retain the domestic life insurer’s top management, with limited reshuffles to win the support of the firm’s 36,000 employees and ease possible tensions with the labor union, the report said.
The bidder said it would not use capital from Chinese businesses, which could assuage concerns by the financial regulator, it said.
Citing three sources, Bloomberg reported on Friday that four bidders for the life insurance unit had offered less than the US insurer’s US$2 billion target price.
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