Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團) and Malaysia-based IOI Properties’ subsidiary Strategy Assets have submitted the supplementary documents required for a preliminary review of the group’s plan to sell its 37.17 percent stake in Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓), the Investment Commission said yesterday.
“We will review the documents and send them to other government agencies soon for further examination,” commission acting executive secretary Emile Chang (張銘斌) said.
The first formal meeting over the case is to be held within two months at the earliest, Chang added.
Taipei Financial Center operates the Taipei 101 skyscraper.
According to documents submitted by Strategy Assets, the firm would transfer NT$25.1 billion (US$792.04 million) into Taiwan to fund the acquisition. It also plans to arrange a loan of NT$24.4 billion from its newly established subsidiary in Taiwan, which has an initial capital of NT$500 million.
In the original application, Strategy Assets only planned to transfer just NT$700 million to finance the acquisition, Chang said.
Commission spokesperson Chu Ping (朱萍) said Strategy Assets’ funding approach for the acquisition complies with local regulations.
Based on the commission’s understanding, no local bank has agreed to grant IOI Properties a loan for the deal.
As a result, the Malaysian company has to find other funding resources, a commission official who requested anonymity said.
After the preliminary review, the commission will ask the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Security Bureau to check if IOI Properties has any Chinese investor, Chu 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