Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation’s third-biggest telecom carrier, said its board had approved a public tender offer for shares of its fixed-line subsidiary, according to a stock exchange filing issued on Friday.
Far EasTone said it would offer NT$10.93 (US$0.34) per share to buy the 1.9 billion shares, or a 73.26 percent stake, of New Century InfoComm Tech Co (NCIC, 新世紀資通), via another wholly owned subsidiary, the filing showed.
The Taipei-based company, which currently owns 695 million shares, or a 26.74 percent stake, of NCIC, would pay a total of NT$20.81 billion to acquire the remaining NCIC shares through this tender offer, it said.
The tender offer will begin tomorrow and continue through August 16, with a maximum 30-day extension, the company said.
Far EasTone’s move to acquire its fixed-line subsidiary did not surprise the market. In July last year, the company’s vice chairman Jan Nilsson said Far EasTone planned to merge its fixed-line and mobile businesses sometime this year, as the firm aimed to increase revenues and improve cost efficiency to better compete with rivals Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) and Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大).
“The business cooperation between the group’s mobile and fixed-line networks will offer more complete telecom services to consumers, while helping achieve the long-term synergy in [our] operating cost,” Far EasTone said in the filing on Friday.
Hours after Far EasTone’s announcement, Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), the nation’s largest food manufacturer, said in separate stock exchange filings that its two subsidiaries sold 207.95 million NCIC shares at NT$10.93 each on the open market on Friday, for a total of NT$190.12 million.
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