Government-controlled shareholders yesterday won a majority of seats on the board of Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓) — which operates Taipei 101 — and Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said he was pleased with the results of the election.
“I am very satisfied,” Chang said after government-controlled institutions took seven of the 13 board seats and three out of four supervisor seats in the election.
Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團) had one supervisor seat. The disgraced Ting Hsin, which was TFCC’s biggest private shareholder and had management control before being embroiled in a high-profile food safety scandal last year, held onto its five seats on the board.
CTBC Bank Co Ltd (中國信託銀行), which took the remaining seat, is widely expected to side with the government-controlled institutions in board votes.
As the winner of the most votes of any of board candidate, McKinney Tsai (蔡友才), chairman of state-invested Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), convened a provisional board meeting after the vote and announced that TFCC president Chou Te-yu (周德宇) is to take over as chairman and that his term would run until Dec. 8, 2018.
Chou, a professor at National Cheng Chi University’s public finance department, has served as a board director at state-owned Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控) and is considered a leading member of the Chunghua Association of Public Finance.
The 48-year-old Chou is TFCC’s first professional manager with a primarily academic background. Replacing him as president will be Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀) senior vice president and general manager Chen Shih-ming (陳世明).
TFCC’s management and board went through an upheaval after Ting Hsin Group was caught selling cooking oil made with animal-grade ingredients last year.
Ting Hsin Group executive Wei Ying-chiao (魏應交) was forced to resign as vice chairman and chief executive of Taipei 101 amid the scandal in October last year, but the group still has its shares and seats on the board.
The company has tried to unload its 37.17 percent stake in Taipei 101, and received an offer late last year for NT$25.14 billion (US$760.73 million at current exchange rates) from Malaysia’s IOI Properties Group Bhd. However, IOI Properties backed out in March after the government expressed opposition to foreign control of the skyscraper, reportedly worried that Chinese funding might be behind the Malaysian group’s bid.
More recently, private equity firm Blackstone Group LP has been in talks to buy the Ting Hsin stake, and TFCC's board agreed in late October to let Blackstone take a look at the company's books to do its due diligence before making an offer.
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