Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), the main subsidiary and the biggest profit source of Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), plans to auction its office building in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) next month in a bid to revitalize assets, bidding organizer Jones Lang LaSalle said yesterday.
The announcement came after the insurer’s board on Tuesday authorized company chairman Eugene Wu (吳東進) to dispose of the 10-year-old office building and the adjacent A8 building of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store (新光三越百貨).
The insurer set a floor price of NT$9 billion (US$277.2 million) for the office building, which features 7,445 ping (24,612m2) of floor space in 10 above-ground levels and five basement levels with 118 parking spaces, Jones Lang LaSalle investment manager Sherry Wu (吳瑤華) said by telephone.
That translates into NT$2.7 million per ping for the ground floor and NT$1.35 million per ping for other floors, in line with market rates, Wu added.
“We are confident in securing buyers for the building on the auction set for Oct. 15 given its location,” Wu said.
At issue is permanent ownership of an upscale building on a 849.69 ping plot that is 98 percent occupied by financial companies, law firms and other corporate tenants, she said.
Domestic life insurance companies will have difficulty meeting the minimum yield requirement of 2.875 percent if the building is not intended for self-occupancy, Wu said.
Companies from other sectors are not subjected to the yield requirements.
Shin Kong Financial earlier this week said net profit last month fell 11.2 percent from June to NT$4.93 billion due to a loss of NT$13.94 billion based on mark-to-market accounting.
In the first seven months of the year, the firm’s net profit grew 44.9 percent year-on-year to NT$70.83 billion, or NT$0.68 per share.
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