Next Media Group’s (壹傳媒集團) plan to sell its media outlets in Taiwan has raised concerns at the financial watchdog over concentration of power and the potential for blurred lines between financial and non-financial sectors given the close ties between buyer Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒) and Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控), local media said yesterday.
The Hong Kong-based group said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday it had inked a memorandum of understanding to sell the Chinese-language Apple Daily, Taiwan Sharp Daily, Next Magazine and Next TV for NT$17.5 billion (US$600 million) “to Koo.”
The filing did not spell out Koo’s full name, but Jeffrey Koo Jr, chairman of the Chinatrust Charity Foundation, is reportedly the prospective buyer, together with Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) chairman William Wong (王文淵) and a Singapore-based private equity fund.
When questioned by reporters during a lunch meeting on Wednesday with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and other business leaders at the company’s Taipei headquarters, Koo, the eldest son of Chinatrust Financial founder and chairman Jeffrey Koo (辜濂松), did not deny or confirm the deal.
On Thursday, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) voiced reservations about the deal on the grounds that it may challenge its call for the separation of financial and non-financial businesses to avoid cyclical volatility in either sector from upsetting the nation’s financial stability.
Jean Chiu (邱淑貞), a deputy director-general of the commission’s banking bureau, reportedly said that the watchdog would look into the buyers’ sources of funding and make known its opinions to help the Ministry of Economic Affairs review the deal, two Chinese-language newspapers, the Commercial Times and the Economic Daily News, reported yesterday.
In previous cases, the commission’s intervention sank a planned acquisition of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (日月光半導體) by The Carlyle Group and another merger deal involving Yageo Corp (國巨) and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co LP.
Based on newspaper reports, the commission disapproves of major shareholders of financial institutions having a controlling interest in non-financial firms and it can intervene by asking financial firms to remove those individuals from their boards.
Major shareholders are individuals who own more than a 10 percent stake in a firm.
Jeffrey Koo Jr does not hold any position at Chinatrust Financial or control a stake in excess of 10 percent, but Chiu reportedly said Koo’s family should also be factored in when considering the threshold.
The commission would check if Jeffrey Koo Jr secures loans from Chinatrust Financial to fund the buyout, local media cited Chiu as saying.
The restrictions are intended to prevent companies from having too much influence, the newspapers cited Chiu as saying.
The commission would attempt “moral persuasion,” before taking other steps, the reports said.
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