LCY Chemical Corp (李長榮化工) yesterday said that it would return to the local equity market within five years after it gained shareholders’ approval to proceed with a takeover by a consortium of investors led by KKR & Co.
More than 80 percent of shareholders approved plans to delist the firm from the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and carry out a stock swap with an investment holding company that would carry out LCY’s takeover.
KKR plans to relist LCY shares on the local bourse in five years’ time after it implements transition plans, and expands into electronic-grade chemicals and expanded polypropylene foam, LCY chairman Hung Tsai-hsing (洪再興) told an extraordinary general meeting in Taipei yesterday.
Hung said that the company has no plans to apply for listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The company has been severely affected by its implication in a series of gas explosions in Kaohsiung in 2014, prompting the management team to seek help from foreign investors to provide shareholders a chance to unload their holdings at a premium.
LCY also announced that its buyout price has been adjusted from NT$56 per share to NT$53.1 to account for a cash dividend of NT$2.9 per share to shareholders in a NT$45.4 billion (US$1.47 billion) deal.
The takeover is to be carried out by a joint venture set up by Carlton (Luxembourg) Holdings SARL, an associate and a member of a consortium led by KKR.
Regarding some shareholders’ questions about the terms of the takeover, the company reiterated that the NT$56 buyout price is higher than the stock’s closing price over the past five years, prior to the gas explosions.
Shareholders who disagree with the buyout share price have the right to contest the matter in court, Hung said.
Former LCY chairman Bowei Lee (李謀偉) and other members of the Lee family who founded the company are to control a 45 percent stake in the joint venture, with KKR holding the remaining 55 percent.
Lee, 63, said in an open letter that he and the Lee family have taken on significant bank loans to fund the buyout arrangement.
Lee, who faces a four-year prison sentence over charges stemming from the explosions, said that he has begun planning for retirement and to distance the company’s owners from management.
The windfall from the takeover would be used to offset a portion of investment losses and to repay debts from the company’s loss-making foray into green energy, he 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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts