The Fair Trade Commission yesterday said it had not received a buyout application for the Next Media Group (壹傳媒集團), nearly one month after the Hong Kong-based company confirmed plans to sell its Taiwanese operations for NT$17.5 billion (US$601.3 million).
Spokesman Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) said the commission has the authority to intervene if the buyers of the group’s print and TV businesses in Taiwan were to proceed with the buyout without submitting an application and gaining approval from the commission.
While the commission cannot take any action now, “there is a four-month deadline for the buyout, so time is on our side,” Sun said at a press conference.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
CHANGES?
Sun’s remark came two days after the Hong Kong company disclosed in a stock exchange filing that it would sell its Taiwanese print assets — Chinese-language Apple Daily (Taiwan) (台灣蘋果日報), Sharp Daily (台灣爽報) and Next Magazine (壹週刊) — for NT$16 billion and Next TV Broadcasting Ltd (壹電視) for NT$1.5 billion.
The filing said the completion of the deal would be conditional on the fulfillment of the buyout of Next Media’s print media subsidiaries, and if the sale agreement of Next Media’s print group is not fulfilled within four months, the prospective buyers have the right to cancel the deal.
According to the filing submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange late on Wednesday, Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) chairman William Wong (王文淵) will acquire 34 percent of Next Media’s print assets, followed by Want Want Times Group (旺旺中時集團) president Tsai Shao-chung (蔡紹中) with 32 percent, Chinatrust Charity Foundation (中信慈善基金會) chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒) with 20 percent and Lung Yen Life Service Corp (龍巖集團) chairman David Lee (李世聰) with 14 percent.
The filing said that buyers of Next TV are Wong with a 34 percent share, Koo with 20 percent and Lee with 14 percent, while Taiwan Fire & Marine Insurance Co (台灣產物保險) chairman Steve Lee’s (李泰宏) son, Lee Jiang-cheng (李建成), will hold 32 percent.
TRANSPARENCY
In response to criticism that the commission has not been fully transparent with its review process, Sun said the commission could not disclose the information provided by the companies involved, adding that it would also not be suitable to make it clear to Next Media’s buyers how they could circumvent the government’s regulatory review.
Asked whether the commission would call a public hearing with the all prospective investors in the Next Media deal participating, Sun said it was an option that the commission would consider.
However, the commission would have to notify participants 30 days before the hearing, but it only has 60 days to review the case, Sun said. Moreover, a public hearing on the case would be nothing more than a means for the commission to gather opinions, he added.
As for whether Apple Daily and Next Magazine should be considered as two products targeting the same market, Sun said the preliminary conclusion is that they target two different markets.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
RSS