Tong Lung Metal Industry Co (東隆五金), a leading door lockset maker, yesterday said it had been informed of a NT$3.7 billion (US$125.2 million) tender offer by Stanley Black & Decker Inc.
The Taiwanese locksmith said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange that the US company had offered to buy its shares at NT$41.05 each on the open market between yesterday and July 10.
Stanley Black & Decker, which was formed by a US$4.5 billion all-stock merger of Stanley Works and Black & Decker Corp in 2010, plans to acquire between 45.91 million and 90.12 million common shares of Tong Lung to make the firm a wholly owned unit, the filing said.
Shares of Tong Lung — known for making “Ezset”-brand locks for overseas markets as well as “Lucky” and “Posse” brands for the domestic market — closed up by the 7 percent daily limit yesterday on the GRETAI Securities Market, after its biggest shareholder, Test Rite International Co (特力), announced on Monday that it would sell all its stock in Tong Lung to Stanley Black & Decker.
The US company’s purchase price of NT$41.05 per Tong Lung share represented an 8.74 percent premium on Tong Lung’s closing price of NT$37.75 on Monday and a 1.73 percent premium on yesterday’s closing price of NT$40.35.
Shares of Test Rite, a domestic trading and retail group that owns a 68.3 percent share of Tong Lung, closed at NT$19.55 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, up 1.82 percent from the previous day.
Tong Lung hovered on the brink of bankruptcy in 1998, but emerged from restructuring in 2001 and re-listed its shares on the over-the-counter GRETAI in March 2006.
It will delist its shares on GRETAI following the tender offer, which is expected to be completed in the third quarter.
Test Rite bought 51.25 million common shares of Tong Lung in 2006 for approximately NT$2.18 billion because it wanted to enter the hardware market for security solution applications. The company said it was expected to book a profit of NT$33 million through the share sale in Tong Lung.
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