Prospective buyers staging hostile takeovers in the financial sector would face additional checks on their business performances, financial conditions and overseas expansion capabilities, as well as their records in corporate social responsibility initiatives, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday.
The decision came after the commission laid out its requirements for merger-and-acquisition (M&A) deals in the sector.
The commission said it plans to finalize its policy on promoting consolidation in the industry by October and to begin accepting applications in November.
Six financial holding companies and seven banks meet the commission’s requirements to launch hostile takeovers, the commission said.
However, consolidation involving government-run financial companies is off the table, it said, adding that the policy would only be applicable to mergers and acquisitions between private-sector security brokerages, banks, insurers and financial holding companies.
The commission would continue collecting industry opinions, Banking Bureau Deputy Director-General Sherri Chuang (莊琇媛) told a news conference in Taipei following a closed-door meeting with company representatives and other regulatory authorities.
During the meeting, company representatives expressed different opinions on the requirements, Chuang said, adding that the commission would finalize its decision within two months.
Some have called the requirement that prospective buyers’ returns on equity and assets must have maintained a 66th percentile rank in their industry within the past three years too strict, suggesting that only one of the metrics be used, Chuang said.
Others have said that instead of measuring a company’s ability to expand abroad by counting the number of its offshore branches, the commission should favor companies that derive larger portions of their total earnings from abroad, Chuang added.
The commission would look into finalizing the terms and whether a buyer would need to purchase more than half of a target company to complete a consolidation deal, while preventing market upheavals during heated hostile takeovers, she said.
Chuang urged prospective buyers to refrain from buying stocks in their acquisition target before the commission starts accepting applications.
“Financial holding companies must have the funds ready to purchase an initial 10 percent stake in their acquisition targets upon submitting their applications,” Chuang said. “Each application will be assessed on a case-by-case basis,” especially those from companies that fall short of the requirements, or have ongoing labor disputes or unresolved consolidation deals.
Commission Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) earlier said that the commission aims to facilitate consolidation deals in the industry, and unlike past reforms, the deregulation plan has no deadlines or limits on applications.
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
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