Luxury hotel Mandarin Oriental Taipei (文華東方酒店) yesterday declined to comment on media reports that its owner, Kai Tai Fung International Co (開泰豐國際), has signed an agreement with a Canadian billionaire to sell the property for NT$38.5 billion (US$1.24 billion).
“Questions about the hotel’s ownership structure should be addressed to the owners,” Kai Tai Fung marketing and communications director Luanne Li (李佳燕) said by telephone.
Mandarin Oriental has a long-term management agreement in place in Taipei, Li said, adding that operations are normal.
The low-key and brief responses came after Chinese-language news outlets reported, without citing sources, that Kai Tai Fung chairman Lin Ming-chun (林命群) has agreed to sell the property to 41-year-old Canadian Calvin Lo (盧啟賢).
The deal has been witnessed by lawyers, the reports said.
Lo is the chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based R.E. Lee International, a life insurance brokerage that specializes in estate planning for ultra-wealthy people.
Under the deal, Lo would buy both the hotel building and 4,200 ping (13,884m2) land, the reports said.
Forbes estimated that Lo, who is currently residing in Hong Kong, had a net worth of US$1.7 billion last year.
Lo has been in talks with Lin since last year and sent his team to conduct due diligence in Taipei several times, the reports said.
Lin reportedly did not relinquish all of his stake in the hotel, but would retain some interest.
Kai Tai Fung declined to comment on the reported deal.
Officials at Mandarin Oriental Taipei, which turned five years old in May, said on condition of anonymity that the reports could prove little more than rumors, as local media had published similar stories in the past.
In 2015, Lin was reported to have sold the hotel to a Chinese buyer for NT$48 billion, a report he dismissed as groundless.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily in July ran a similar report, which Lin again denied at the time.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump weighed in on a pressing national issue: The rebranding of a restaurant chain. Last week, Cracker Barrel, a Tennessee company whose nationwide locations lean heavily on a cozy, old-timey aesthetic — “rocking chairs on the porch, a warm fire in the hearth, peg games on the table” — announced it was updating its logo. Uncle Herschel, the man who once appeared next to the letters with a barrel, was gone. It sparked ire on the right, with Donald Trump Jr leading a charge against the rebranding: “WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?!” Later, Trump Sr weighed
HEADWINDS: Upfront investment is unavoidable in the merger, but cost savings would materialize over time, TS Financial Holding Co president Welch Lin said TS Financial Holding Co (台新新光金控) said it would take about two years before the benefits of its merger with Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) become evident, as the group prioritizes the consolidation of its major subsidiaries. “The group’s priority is to complete the consolidation of different subsidiaries,” Welch Lin (林維俊), president of the nation’s fourth-largest financial conglomerate by assets, told reporters during its first earnings briefing since the merger took effect on July 24. The asset management units are scheduled to merge in November, followed by life insurance in January next year and securities operations in April, Lin said. Banking integration,
LOOPHOLES: The move is to end a break that was aiding foreign producers without any similar benefit for US manufacturers, the US Department of Commerce said US President Donald Trump’s administration would make it harder for Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc to ship critical equipment to their chipmaking operations in China, dealing a potential blow to the companies’ production in the world’s largest semiconductor market. The US Department of Commerce in a notice published on Friday said that it was revoking waivers for Samsung and SK Hynix to use US technologies in their Chinese operations. The companies had been operating in China under regulations that allow them to import chipmaking equipment without applying for a new license each time. The move would revise what is known
Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Cambricon Technologies Corp (寒武紀科技) plunged almost 9 percent after warning investors about a doubling in its share price over just a month, a record gain that helped fuel a US$1 trillion Chinese market rally. Cambricon triggered the selloff with a Thursday filing in which it dispelled talk about nonexistent products in the pipeline, reminded investors it labors under US sanctions, and stressed the difficulties of ascending the technology ladder. The Shanghai-listed company’s stock dived by the most since April in early yesterday trading, while the market stood largely unchanged. The litany of warnings underscores growing scrutiny of
RSS