Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), the main subsidiary and biggest profit source of Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), announced yesterday that it has acquired an office building in London for ￡136 million (US$206 million) as part of the company’s efforts to elevate its long-term fixed income return and asset quality by revitalizing its commercial real-estate portfolio.
The insurer said the purchase was completed on Friday last week, when it also sold off its A8 commercial building in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) to Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) in a NT$27.034 billion (US$817.6 million) deal.
The building houses a branch of the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store (新光三越百貨) chain and its sale is expected to yield NT$7.8 billion in gains for the insurer, which has been beset by larger-than-expected losses this year.
The two transactions represent a seamless transition of the company’s capital as it disposed of matured commercial real-estate property that has met its designated investment goals and redirected the proceeds to another viable alternative, Shin Kong Life said in a statement.
Located in the City of London financial district, Shin Kong Life’s new building, 40 Gracechurch Street, is expected to yield NT$300 million in rental proceeds each year, generating more than 4 percent in investment returns in the company’s first overseas purchase, Shin Kong Financial chairman Eugene Wu (吳東進) said in the statement.
In addition, Shin Kong Financial said that its board also approved a plan to purchase real estate in Tokyo via a special purpose vehicle arrangement — where a legal entity such as a limited company is created to fulfill specific objectives without putting the parent company at risk.
Given Japan’s persistently low interest rates, which range between 0.8 and 1 percent, the low cost of financing is expected to boost real-estate investment returns in the country to more than 7 percent, compared with 4 percent in other major markets, pending the approval of Japanese regulators, Shin Kong Financial said.
By purchasing real estate in Japan, the company would improve its risk diversification, as well as its capital utilization, it said.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS