The fate of Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽) remains in limbo yesterday as a board meeting to discuss a merger agreement that was scheduled for 2pm yesterday had not begun as of last night. The meeting was called to consider extending a deadline for a merger with CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控).
The insurer signed a deal with CTBC in October last year to join the conglomerate through a share swap, but is reconsidering after a more generous suitor entered the scene.
As of 9pm yesterday, Taiwan Life had not filed a stock briefing on the board’s decision, while the Chinese-language Economic Daily reported without citing sources that board members were unable to enter the meeting room at 7pm.
CTBC’s failure to realize the deal before the deadline on Sunday enables Taiwan Life to call a board meeting and terminate the merger agreement.
BOARD DIVISIONS
The 10-member board is divided on the matter, as Long Bon International Co (龍邦), a Greater Taichung-based hotel service provider and the largest shareholder with four seats, has made clear its desire to end the deal.
State-owned Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控), the second-largest shareholder with three seats, prefers to maintain the deal in the absence of compelling reasons to change it.
That leaves three independent directors a decisive say. Chung-Hua Institution Economic Research (中華經濟研究院) president Wu Chung-shu (吳中書), one of the three, said by telephone at 6pm that he was in the meeting, and could not be reached later.
Taiwan Life approached potential buyers over the last one-and-a-half years, saying its major shareholders prefer to be purely investors rather than operators amid an increasingly difficult business environment.
MARKET RESPONSE
Taiwan Life shares fell 1.84 percent to NT$24 yesterday after closing down by the daily limit a day earlier, while CTBC shares ended down 0.51 percent to NT$19.35, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
The insurer’s flip-flop reportedly has to do with Hong Kong businesswoman Maisy Ho (何超蕸), who has offered to buy a majority stake in Long Bon, local Chinese-language media 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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts